President Obama paraded people who got rebate checks from their health insurance yesterday. But the problem is in most cases the rebate goes to the employer, not the employee. The employer pays for the insurance and gets the rebate.
You can read his specious claims at Associated Press.
But read the reality also:
THE FACTS: Just as he did a year ago, Obama made a splashy announcement about rebates that incorporates misleading advertising.
The health care law requires insurance companies that spend too much on administrative expenses to issue rebates to customers. But those customers are often employers that in turn offer insurance to workers and bear the bulk of the costs. In workplace plans, the rebate goes to the employer, which must use it for the company health plan but does not have to pass all or part of it on to the worker. People who buy their own insurance and qualify for a rebate get it directly.
Obama was on solid ground in saying "millions of Americans" got rebate checks last year, but the number was not close to 13 million as he implied.
Of the 12.8 million rebates announced last year, health policy experts estimated 3 million would go directly to the insured. The government didn't know how many.
Nearly two-thirds of the 12.8 million were only entitled to pro-rated and decidedly modest rebates, because they were covered by employers that pay most of their premiums. Workers typically pay about 20 percent of the premium for single coverage, 30 percent for a family plan. Employers pay the rest.
And employers can use all the rebate money, including the workers' share, to benefit the company health plan …
There are two more sets of Obama exaggerations/misstatements at Associated Press.
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