AP FACT CHECK: Sen. Cruz scrambles the stats on Obamacare

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senators examining Amy Coney Barrett's nomination to the Supreme Court heard a wildly inaccurate statement from one of their own Wednesday about how much health insurance premiums have risen since the inception of “Obamacare.”

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas scrambled the statistics on premium costs and took an errant swing at insurance company profits as he inveighed against the “catastrophic failure of Obamacare.”

Republicans are on defense over the Affordable Care Act — or Obamacare — because the Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to overturn the 2010 law in its entirety. Obamacare provides coverage to more than 20 million people and protects those with preexisting medical conditions from being denied an individual policy, or charged more.

From the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Barrett's nomination:

CRUZ: “Obamacare has doubled the profits of the big health insurance companies, doubled them. Obamacare has been great corporate welfare for giant health insurance companies at the same time, according to the Kaiser foundation, premiums — average families' premiums — have risen more than — have risen $7,967 per year on average. That is catastrophic that millions of Americans can’t afford health care. It is a catastrophic failure of Obamacare.”

THE FACTS: No, family premiums for health insurance have not risen by $7,967 per year, as Cruz asserted. Nowhere close.

That figure comes from the Kaiser Family Foundation but it captures the increase over 11 years — 2009 to 2020 — not per year, as Cruz put it. In addition, the figure applies to the cost of premiums for employer-provided coverage, not for Obamacare or for health insurance overall. Employer coverage is in a totally different health insurance...