PolitiFact: Is Obamacare driving up Medicare Advantage premiums for seniors?

In the 2014 race for Florida's governor, the main issue of the campaign may be a national issue instead of a state issue.  Incumbent Florida Governor Rick Scott (R) has been campaigning across the Sunshine State, and he's made his opposition to the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, one of his major platforms.

In a recent op-ed piece for a South Florida Spanish-language newspaper, Governor Scott explained why he believed Obamacare was bad for seniors in Florida.  Scott wrote this:

"Seniors enrolled in Medicare Advantage are going to see an average premium increase between $50 and $90 per month."

Our partners at PolitiFact have been following both the gubernatorial campaign as well as the Affordable Care Act.  PolitiFact reporter Josh Gillin reports back that Governor Scott's claim rates MOSTLY FALSE on the Truth-O-Meter.  Gillin said that Scott was selective in the information that he used to back up his claim.

"What we found was that Governor Scott used numbers from a report that was generated by an insurance lobbying group in 2013," Gillin said.  "The report was but one of many reports on what was speculated to happen once Obamacare became the law of the land.  Moreover, the report used goverment data that wasn't finalized at the time that the report came out.  That data wound up being subsequently revised, making the original report obsolete."

PolitiFact talked to several experts about the report and those experts said that the report was created with the idea that it would maximize the benefits for the insurance industry.  However, those same experts, and even the group that commissioned the report, said that the numbers were off significantly, and that the report was no longer one hundred percent accurate.

"We had compelling arguments from insurance industry experts who said that Scott's numbers were off," said Gillin.  "We should note that the numbers changed again after Scott's editorial came out, but they were still quite a distance from what Scott was claiming."

Gillin points out that, while the premiums are lower now than what Scott's claim said, there's always the possibility that those premiums could rise in the future.  Gillin said, though, that the data going back to 2010 shows a general decrease rather than an increase, and as such, Scott's claim earns a MOSTLY FALSE from the Truth-O-Meter.

SOURCES: MEDICARE ADVANTAGE PREMIUMS

• PolitiFact ruling
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