Donald Trump is often accused of stretching the truth or making things up about virtually every topic he discusses, so it's no surprise that experts would find fault in one of his favorite claims on health care.
In a column Sunday for The Wall Street Journal, Drew Altman, president of the Menlo Park, California-based Kaiser Family Foundation, took on Trump's repeated claim that the Obama administration is preventing premium increases for Affordable Care Act plans from being released until after the Nov. 8 election.
That simply isn't true, explains Altman.
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For starters, insurers have already submitted their proposed rates to state insurance commissioners for approval. Although some of those proposed rate increases were indeed enormous, and some states have not made all of the information available, the average hike for mid-level silver plans was only 9 percent in cities for which all of the data was available, the Kaiser Family Foundation found in its analysis.
Altman points out that if anybody were able to conceal information, it would be state insurance commissioners, not the Obama administration, as the GOP presidential nominee has charged.
Even the final rates approved by state regulators will be available to the public before the election. The next open enrollment period for ACA plans begins one week before Election Day.
Obamacare is nowhere near the flashpoint politically that it was in past years, notably the 2010 midterm elections and the 2012 presidential election.
For one, mainstream Republicans are conflicted about whether it is wise to attack or propose dismantling a program that now has millions of beneficiaries.
But perhaps more importantly, the Republican nominee is distracted by other priorities: Immigration, terrorism, trade and responding to any and all perceived slights from fellow Republicans, the parents of a fallen soldier or the "disgusting and corrupt media."
In fact, while Trump enthusiastically calls the ACA "a total disaster," his own statements on health care have at times suggested he supports the idea of a health care system in which the government plays a strong role. In past years he signaled support for a single-payer plan and during the GOP primary this year he said he agreed with the individual mandate, although he quickly walked that back.
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