PolitiFact gives the 8 in 10 lie a "Half True."

We can trust PolitiFact to lean left.

Sometimes we bait PolitiFact into giving us examples of its left-leaning tendencies. On November 1, 2017, we noticed a false tweet from President Barack Obama. So we drew PolitiFact's attention to it via the #PolitiFactThis hashtag.

Subsidies for the vast majority of people? 8 in 10 can find plans for $75/month or less? #PolitiFactThis

— Bryan W. White (@ZebraFactCheck) November 1, 2017

We didn't need to have PolitiFact look into it to know that what Obama said was false. He presented a circular argument, in effect, using the statistics for people who had chosen an ACA exchange plan to mislead the wider public about their chances of receiving subsidized and inexpensive health insurance.

PolitiFact identified the deceit in its fact check, but used biased supposition to soften it (bold emphasis added):

"It only takes a few minutes and the vast majority of people qualify for financial assistance," Obama says. "Eight in 10 people this year can find plans for $75 a month or less."

Can 8 in 10 people get health coverage for $75 a month or less? It depends on who those 10 people are.

The statistic only refers to people currently enrolled in HealthCare.gov.

The video ad appeals to people who are uninsured or who might save money by shopping for health insurance on the government exchange. PolitiFact's wording fudges the truth. It might have accurately said "The statistic is correct for people currently enrolled in HealthCare.gov. but not for the population targeted by the ad."

In the ad, the statistic refers to the ad's target population, not merely to those currently enrolled in HealthCare.gov.

And PolitiFact makes thin and misleading excuses for Obama's deception:

(I)n the absence of statistics on HealthCare.gov visitors, the 8-in-10 figure is the only data point available to those wondering about their eligibility for low-cost plans within the marketplace. What’s more, the website also helps enroll people who might not have otherwise known they were eligible for other government programs.

The nonpartisan fact-checker implies that the lack of data helps excuse using data in a misleading way. We reject that type of excuse-making. If Obama does not provide his audience the context allowing it to understand the data point without being misled, then he deserves full blame for the resulting deception.

PolitiFact might as well be saying "Yes, he misled people, but for a noble purpose!"

PolitiFact, in fact, provided other data points in its preceding paragraph that helped contextualize Obama's misleading data point.

We think PolitiFact's excuse-making influences the reasoning it uses when deciding its subjective "Truth-O-Meter" ratings.

HALF TRUE – The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.
MOSTLY FALSE – The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.
FALSE – The statement is not accurate.

In objective terms, what keeps Obama's statement from deserving a "Mostly False" or "False" rating?
His statement was literally false when taken in context, and his underlying message was likewise false.

About 10 to 12 million are enrolled in HealthCare.Gov ("Obamacare") plans. About 80 percent of those receive the subsidies Obama lauds. About 6 million persons buying insurance outside the exchange fail to qualify for subsidies, according to PolitiFact. Millions among the uninsured likewise fail to qualify for subsidies.

Surely a fact-checker can develop a data point out of numbers like those.

But this is what happens when non-partisan fact checkers lean left.


Correction Nov. 6, 2017: Removed "About 6 million uninsured do not qualify for Medicaid or subsidies" as it was superseded by reporting later in the post).

PolitiFact Georgia's kid gloves for Democratic candidate

Did Democratic Party candidate for Georgia governor Stacey Evans help win a Medicare fraud lawsuit, as she claimed? PolitiFact Georgia says there's no question about it:

PolitiFact defines its "True" rating as "The statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing."

Evans' statement misses quite a bit, so we will use this as an example of PolitiFact going easy on a Democrat. It's very likely that PolitiFact would have thought of the things we'll point out if it had been rating a Republican candidate. Republicans rarely get the kid gloves treatment from PolitiFact. But it's pretty common for Democrats.

The central problem in the fact check stems from a fallacy of equivocation. In PolitiFact's view, a win is a win, even if Evans implied a win in court covering the issue of fraud when in fact the win was an out-of-court settlement that stopped short of proving the existence of Medicare fraud.

Overlooking that considerable difference in the two kinds of wins counts as the type of error we should expect a partisan fact checker to make. A truly neutral fact-checker would not likely make the mistake.

Evans' claim vs. the facts

 

Evans: "I helped win one of the biggest private lawsuits against Medicare fraud in history."

Fact: Evans helped with a private lawsuit alleging Medicare fraud

Fact: The case was not decided in court, so none of the plaintiff's attorneys can rightly claim to have won the lawsuit. The lawsuit was made moot by an out-of-court settlement. As part of the settlement, the defendant admitted no wrongdoing (that is, no fraud).

Evans' statement leads her audience toward two false conclusions. First, that her side of the lawsuit won in court. It did not. Second, that the case proved the (DaVica) company was guilty of Medicare fraud. It did not.

How does a fact checker miss something this obvious?

It was plain in the facts as PolitiFact reported them that the court did not decide the case. It was therefore likewise obvious that no lawyer could claim an unambiguous lawsuit victory.

Yet PolitiFact found absolutely no problem with Evans' claim on its "Truth-O-Meter":

Evans said that she "helped win one of the biggest private lawsuits against Medicare fraud in history." The lead counsel on the case corroborated her role in it, and the Justice Department confirmed its historic importance.

Her claim that they recovered $324 million for taxpayers also checks out.

We rate this statement True.

Indeed, PolitiFact's summary reads like a textbook example of confirmation bias, emphasizing what confirms the claim and ignoring whatever does not.

There is an obvious difference between impartially evaluating evidence in order to come to an unbiased conclusion and building a case to justify a conclusion already drawn. In the first instance one seeks evidence on all sides of a question, evaluates it as objectively as one can, and draws the conclusion that the evidence, in the aggregate, seems to dictate. In the second, one selectively gathers, or gives undue weight to, evidence that supports one's position while neglecting to gather, or discounting, evidence that would tell against it.

Evans can only qualify for the "True" rating if PolitiFact's definition of "True" means nothing and the rating is entirely subjective.



Correction July 17, 2017: Changed "out-court settlement" to "out-of-court settlement." Also made some minor changes to the formatting.
Correction Oct. 8, 2017: Changed "Shelley Evans" to "Stacey Evans" in the opening paragraph. Our apologies to Stacey Evans for that mistake.