Surprise! Surprise! That family of four whose “Christmas list” was made up of Scroogey scrimping thanks to the Affordable Care Act should be able to have a happy holiday after all. No thanks to Fox News, however. The "fair and balanced" network was too busy concern-trolling ObamaCare to report on the better health insurance deals almost certainly available under the ACA. Again.

I posted my skepticism last night about the Joy family in California when I noted that the Kelly File cribbed their story from a Heritage Foundation blog post. In identically-framed reports, The Kelly File and Heritage played up the devastating effects the Joys’ new health insurance premiums are having on the family. They were going to cut back on having their teeth cleaned, get rid of their landline and give up their anniversary getaways, Fox and Heritage reported. Despite their supposed sympathy, neither seemed to have done any verification of the Joys’ sad situation.

In my previous post, I questioned why, if the family was struggling and living off the husband’s “retirement salary,” they did not qualify for health insurance subsidies. So I tweeted Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher, who has done some excellent work on the subject, for his take. In our Twitter conversation, he validated my suspicions. Now, he also has a post on the subject.

Christopher writes:

According to that Heritage post, the Joys “live off her husband’s retirement salary,” which, according to what Kate Joy told them, is $45,120.00 a year, and that “the family does not qualify for any subsidies.” But according to Covered California, both of those things cannot be true. A family of four adults from Sonora, CA, at that income level, qualifies for subsidies that would make an Anthem Blue Cross Bronze plan available for $4 per month. That’s not a typo. Four bucks. For $172 /mo., such a family could get an enhanced Silver plan from Anthem with a $1,000 family deductible, $16,000 less than the Joys’ old plan. $507, what the Joys were paying before, gets an Anthem Gold plan with no deductible at all. Heritage and Gallagher also fail to acknowledge the fact that without Obamacare, the Joys wouldn’t even have the option of covering their adult children.

So instead of costing them more money, the Joys could probably resume their dental visits, keep their landline and their anniversary celebrations - and still have money left over.

We can add another entry in the list of phony ObamaCare victims that Fox and the Kelly File have foisted on their unsuspecting viewers.

The Kelly File segment from last night is below.