“Tis The Season Of Fact Checking

The Washington Examiner posted a story today about a comment made by Senator Mark Warner of Virginia during a debate with former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie.

The article reports:

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., earlier this week pushed back on estimates that approximately 250,000 Virginians will lose their health insurance policies as a result of the Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s signature piece of domestic legislation.

That figure is “completely made up,” Warner said this week during a debate with Republican challenger, former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie.

“My opponent’s charge and this figure of 250,000, actually, the head of the Association of Virginia said that number was completely made up. And [Gillespie’s] attack has been called by … PolitiFact, simply false,” the Democratic incumbent said, citing the noted fact-checking group and Doug Gray, the executive director of the Virginia Association of Health Plans, an association group.

Republicans on the committee calculated the figure based on remarks Gray made at a Sept. 10 hearing when he said that approximately 60 percent of Virginians with individual plans renewed early. There are an estimated 400,000 policyholders in the Virginia market. So take 60 percent of all policyholders, apply it to the state’s 400,000 and you now have roughly 250,000 affected Virginians.

The article goes on to explain that the number of 250,000 was reported in the news, but all the news stories relied on the same source, which have not proved to be reliable. However, the article also explains that there are some serious problems with the implementation of ObamaCare in Virginia in terms of rapidly rising premiums and cancelled policies.

Polls indicate that Senator Warner is leading in this election, so the problems with ObamaCare may be irrelevant. However, American voters need to realize that if they want to avoid the problems that ObamaCare will continue to bring, they need to vote for people who will be willing to overturn it–generally those people are not Democrats.