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Fact check: What you need to know about the “Dishonesty” ad targeting Dave Loebsack

WQAD News 8 reporter Brittany Lewis and the Quad-City Times reporter Ed Tibbetts have partnered to check the facts behind political ads.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the seventh in a series of political ad fact checks that will be published heading into the Nov. 4 general election. Quad-City Times political reporter Ed Tibbetts and WQAD-TV reporter Brittany Lewis are collaborating on the effort. Lewis' report will air on the 10 p.m. Sunday newscast of WQAD, News 8.

By Ed Tibbetts, Quad-City Times

“Dishonest” is a 30-second commercial that targets Rep. Dave Loebsack, D-Iowa, and paid for by Mariannette Miller-Meeks, his Republican challenger.

Watch the ad – click here.

When and where it is running: The ad has been running in Iowa’s 2nd District and has been on the air this past week.

The claims: This ad makes a number of claims about Loebsack’s support for the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Among the major ones: The ad accuses him of “lying” while promising people they could keep their health insurance policies, that the law cut Medicare by $716 billion and that a quarter million Iowans will see their insurance rates rise next year.

What you should know: First, let’s look at the allegation that Loebsack lied when he said people could keep their health insurance. The claim stems from an Aug. 15, 2009, town hall in Burlington in which the congressman did say, “if you have health insurance now, keep it.”

Since the Affordable Care Act was implemented, Americans have been dropped from insurance policies. But in Iowa, the vast majority of individual policyholders have been able to keep their policies because of the government — with Loebsack's support — allowing them to do so if their state insurance commission approved it. Iowa Insurance Commissioner Nick Gerhart granted a two-year extension through 2016.

Having said that, those policyholders, the vast majority with Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, eventually may face the loss of those policies, which don’t meet the coverage requirements of the Affordable Care Act.

As for the allegation that $716 billion was cut from Medicare, the law did reduce projected Medicare spending over 10 years by that amount, but critics and backers of the law argue about the impact. The cuts are from a number of places, including payments to Medicare Advantage, a program that allows people to buy Medicare coverage from private insurers, as well as payments being made to health-care providers.

Backers of the law say that the cuts won’t touch benefits and that they're aimed at waste in the system. Critics argue the cuts to providers can’t help but be felt by beneficiaries — and those enrolled in the Medicare Advantage program are seeing the impact.

The claim that a quarter million Iowans will see their insurance rates rise next year comes from a request earlier this year by Wellmark for rate increases in individual and small group plans in Iowa.

The company, which has requested premium increases in the past, said the Affordable Care Act partially contributed to the requested rate increase of 11.9 percent to 14.5 percent for its 19,000 members who are in ACA-compliant plans. But the company also said the increase of 5.9 percent or less that it requested for another 130,000 members were in non-ACA-compliant plans, and the Affordable Care Act did not contribute to those increases. The same is true with the approximately 100,000 customers employed by small businesses, who are seeing 2 to 4 percent increases, the company said.

One other thing to note: The decision to allow those non-compliant policies to be extended has has an impact on the customers of CoOportunity Health, a new insurer on the Affordable Care Act exchange. It says the bifurcated market has pushed its rates significantly higher than they would be otherwise.

Coming next: An ad that targets Republican 2nd District congressional hopeful Mariannette Miller-Meeks.

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WQAD News 8 reporter Brittany Lewis and the Quad-City Times reporter Ed Tibbetts have partnered to check the facts behind political ads.

Watch for our Political Ad Fact Check reports Sunday nights on News 8 at 10 p.m.

Check out our continuing Political Fact Check coverage, click here.

Fact check: What you need to know about the “Dishonesty” ad targeting Dave Loebsack

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