Freddie deBoer writes:
Personally, I think denying people adequate health care coverage because of their economic condition or employment status is a practical and ethical failure equal to Jim Crow or similar regimes of racial inequality. Now you can know me by my extremism. And so the meticulously curated pose of believing in a theoretical regime of universal health care while opposing all real reform seems to me to be dishonest and worse.
There have been no real efforts at reform emanating from the right. The closest thing was the Wyden/Bennett bill to which Bob Bennett hung his name and and for which he subsequently lost his long-held senate seat. That, in any case, was the brainchild of Ron Wyden, a real champion of the healthcare debates. I’m glad several Republicans were willing to sign on to it, even if they did so knowing it would never pass. Certainly no Republicans would now.
Dave Weigel reported recently on a new bill Senators John Barasso and Lindsey Graham have introduced in the Senate, The State Health Care Choice Act, which essentially allows states to opt out of the new healthcare law. It’s important to note that Senator Wyden already had something like this included in the original law (indeed, under Wyden’s amendment states can easily set up their own plans even without individual mandates, which sort of takes the wind out of the sails of all these lawsuits if you ask me…). The difference between his and Barasso/Graham’s legislation is that Wyden allowed opting out if states were able to meet or beat federal criteria. The Republican version is simply an opt-out, no strings attached.
Weigel reports Graham saying, “You didn’t listen to us when we had ideas.” Right. Republicans had control of the government until 2006, and of the White House until 2008. No healthcare reform bill full of Republican ideas was forthcoming – only the hugely expensive senior-citizen bribe known as Medicare Part D. Perhaps Graham means we didn’t listen to all the Republican ideas on how to obstruct healthcare reform.
More importantly, the State Health Care Choice Act is not intended as a way to expand or improve coverage in any way, but rather a “third front” against the new healthcare law. This is not surprising. So far the only policy prescriptions for healthcare reform coming from the right have been entirely based on free markets, something even Hayek recognized was not exactly a plausible solution to health coverage. There’s no doubt that some free market mechanisms could help improve healthcare efficiency, access, etc. The employer-based coverage system we have in place now is widely agreed to be a monumental mistake, and letting individuals choose their own insurance would be a step up from where we are today. Getting rid of regional monopolies in favor of national competitors would increase the size of risk pools and drive costs down, while still allowing for consumer choice. But this won’t magically lead to those with pre-existing conditions finding adequate, affordable healthcare (if they can get any to begin with). This still leaves the poor and the old-but-not-old-enough-for-Medicare crowd uninsured.
I don’t like some parts of the Affordable Care Act. I don’t like the fact that it’s a huge handout to corporate insurers for one thing. But it creates a system that is more fair than the status quo. It helps insure millions of Americans. It raises the level of eligibility for Medicaid which in turn helps the poorest among us. It creates standards for health insurance that are reasonable and uniform. These are achievements on their own merits.
Here’s Freddie again:
When does intellectual seriousness compel people to present a real, actionable, and plausible plan that covers the uninsured, or else abandon the pretense that they want them covered? We have been debating health care reform that is like Obamacare since well before the ’08 election. We’ve been debating the actual legislation for years now. So: when does it become incumbent on those opposed to PPACA to present a viable alternative or else abandon the pretense that they want coverage for the uninsured at all? Is there a specific date when I should expect a viable, realistic plan to emerge from the Republican leadership, one that actually could be passed as the “replace” part of repeal and replace? Is the time horizon literally endless? Ross Douthat, to pick just one, has written for ages about endorsing a conservative alternative to Obamacare. How long is he willing to wait? When can we fairly call him on it if such an alternative isn’t forthcoming?
Me, personally, well. I think what is taken for libertarian or conservative economic policy is flatly incompatible with the goal of covering all people. The “free market,” as conventionally defined, can’t provide adequate, affordable coverage to the sick or the old or the infirm. I’m happy to be proven wrong, though. So ante up. Show me your version. I don’t love Obamacare. I think it’s a weak, insufficient compromise. But I had to set aside my dissatisfaction in order to support a qualified improvement. I think others can do the same.
I agree. The usefulness of the market critique ends when you start talking universal coverage. It can be a good way to think about improving efficiencies, controlling costs, fixing anti-competitive practices, etc. but when it comes to actually achieving full coverage of every American citizen, the free market isn’t helpful at all. The very nature of markets is to pick winners and losers. This is a very good way to allocate resources, to gauge a shift in consumption trends and organically shift the labor force and capital into new industries. Indeed, it works quite well for selective health procedures like plastic surgery or laser-surgery for vision. These have actually become cheaper over time. But they are selective. Markets will never be the answer for necessary or unexpected health services.
When ideology becomes so important that people no longer realize the limits of their own ideas, good ideas are drowned in favor of purity, the perfect becomes the enemy of the good, the abstract becomes the enemy of the tangible. The ACA may be weak tea – Wyden/Bennett would have been better, single-payer would have been better, both would have been cheaper and more effective – but the ACA is certainly a step up from the status quo. Anyone with a pre-existing condition could tell you that.
Maude
And ACA is rather important to over 30 million Americans who had no coverage before.
MCConnell is a, I can’t think of a name.
PurpleGirl
Today is the day that those new Republican house members get their health insurance. Be still my heart. Maybe I can get one of them to adopt me so I can get health care coverage. The plan these creeps get covers not only them, but their spouses and children.
TheMightyTrowel
@Maude: I can. McConnell is a privileged, douchebag with his head so firmly up the ass of the corporate paymasters that he’s forced to lick their tonsils.
dr. bloor
They were willing to sign onto it precisely because they knew it wouldn’t pass. It’s the sort of craven dishonesty that deBoer condemns in the quote. I can’t imagine why that would be comforting to you.
Kryptik
I continue to fucking laugh when Republicans complain about being locked out of the debate and the bill having no suggestions from them ever being added to it.
Two words: Individual Mandate. Remember, this used to be YOUR idea, assholes, and now it’s your rallying cry against denying us non-richies any practical right to decent health care.
Maude
@TheMightyTrowel:
I knew someone would come along and do it justice. That was a beaut and my hat’s off to you.
It cheered me right up.
Villago Delenda Est
Over in the corrupt soshulist dictatorships of Europe, there are no for profit health insurance companies, and this allows them to actually pay attention to things like cost control, dealing with anticompetitiveness, improving efficiency, instead of concentrating on “shareholder value” which by necessity doesn’t bother with any of that because if you’re actually paying for the health care of the policy holders, you’re cutting into sacred profit.
Health care is, pretty obviously, not like making a decision on what can of beans to buy, or like shopping for a new TV. “Oh, just drive the ambulance around to all the local emergency rooms so we can do some price comparisons on treating heart attacks, James…”
Barb (formerly Gex)
Americans would rather hate on other Americans than improve their own lot in life. Same shit, different day.
“If those black people, hispanic people, gay people, or poor get treated like actual human beings, it is quite frankly, not worth the benefit to myself to support reform.” – Real Americans
TheMightyTrowel
@Maude: you’re welcome. I’m copyediting at the moment and feel stabby enough as it is.
E.D. Kain
@Villago Delenda Est: There are for-profit insurers in Europe. They operate differently, but they certainly exist.
JoshA
The GOP had control of Congress into January 2007, and of the White House into January 2009.
Everyone puts that wrong, it drives me crazy.
cleek
good post.
Kryptik
OT: Oh fuck. Oh fuck, Egypt looks like it’s going to hell. And worse the Military seems to have turned on the protestors.
Villago Delenda Est
@E.D. Kain:
They’d have to operate differently. In part because they’re in an environment where stealing the premiums of your policy holders will send you to jail. Unlike in this country, where it’s accepted practice.
E.D. Kain
@dr. bloor: it showed at least some willingness to work toward a positive solution rather than just obstruct. Bennett has not apologized for his support even though it cost him dearly.
Mnemosyne
Republicans have no interest in trying to fix our broken healthcare system, because they don’t believe government can do anything but direct money towards Republican donors. They don’t want government to do anything else, because it would interfere with their donors’ profits.
Once you understand that, everything else makes sense.
Erik Vanderhoff
The individual mandate was invented by Republican economists and policy wonks during the G.H.W. Bush Administration as a market-based alternative to single-payer health care, which was seen, even then, as the only other workable alternative.
Anyone who says that the individual mandate is a left-wing idea or isn’t market-based is a fucking liar. And it’s time to just call a spade a spade.
burnspbesq
@Villago Delenda Est:
That’s an interesting narrative. Unfortunately, it’s factually incorrect. In the two European systems that are most often pointed to as models for the US to follow, the Swiss and the Dutch, private health insurance is an essential component of the system, and those companies make money.
Try harder. Google is your friend.
E.D. Kain
@Kryptik: True but you may be picking at nits. What irk me is people saying Obama has been in charge for three years.
El Cid
First, the current plan is largely a Republican plan, i.e., Dole’s, as well as that of Mitt Romney. But that was all a million, billion years ago and didn’t happen anyway plus Obama took those ideas and made them into Kenya-ACORN soshullism.
When do those ‘questioning’ global warming (i.e., the increased heat budget of the global energy system) have to present a better explanation of what’s going on than the current, scrutinized best theories?
What role does “intellectual seriousness” play in American political and ideological discourse?
Barb (formerly Gex)
Where the ideas come from isn’t really important. It doesn’t matter that these are right wing ideas. The base rejects them because the ideas benefit everyone, not just them. If the single payer solution improved health care for everyone but blacks, gays, and other undesirables it would have been passed years ago.
Since Atwater, all the right has done is yell “DONT TAKE MY MONEY AND HELP BLACKS!” The ones that have fully bought into those economic ideas yet have discarded the racism are called libertarians. The ones that keep the racism are called conservatives.
E.D. Kain
@burnspbesq: quite right.
evinfuilt
@E.D. Kain:
Yep, they get private insurance as a second layer. Much like what people on Medicare can get if they have excess money to spend.
Which should tell republicans and corporations something. Medicare for all, and private health insurance for bonus fun. Plenty people will spend extra on their cadillac insurance.
Mind you, I’d love to see no deductible/co-pay for Medicare. Dealing with too many people using healthcare preventively sounds like a wonderful problem. Means we’ll need more nurses, doctors and other medical practitioners, more jobs is always good.
Kryptik
@E.D. Kain:
Eh?…did you reply to the wrong post or something?
Bob
Actually reading Hayek is unnecessary for the current crop of, broadly, conservatives. They know the title and that is, obviously, sufficient.
batgirl
@burnspbesq: Yes, but at least in the Swiss example all private insurance companies have to offer a highly-regulated comprehensive basic plan at no profit while they can then sell “extra” insurance for a profit on top of that.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but even in those European companies where private health insurance plays a role, it is a highly regulated role in regards to what they have to offer and what they can charge and also highly-regulated as to profits.
Not exactly “free market.”
Redshift
@burnspbesq: From what I’ve read, they are not allowed to make a profit on the basic healthcare package. Is that incorrect?
John Cole
This post is shrill.
E.D. Kain
@Kryptik: oops yes that was meant for Josh.
@burnspbesq: quite right.
dmsilev
Not listening to Republican suggestions? Have they repressed the memory of the several months worth of “discussions” that the Senate Finance Committee conducted, between an equal number of Republicans and Democrats?
dms
batgirl
@John Cole: Yes, I’m beginning to think you replaced Kain with an impostor.
El Cid
@burnspbesq: True. However, there are important differences which should probably always be emphasized: Everyone is required to purchase basic health insurance, and that basic insurance is available to everyone.
In Switzerland, companies offering the basic health insurance cannot profit from it. In the Netherlands, public health insurance covers the longer term and more serious illnesses. There’s far less or even no relation of premium costs to the sorts of factors like age or prior conditions here.
But yes, at some point, a strongly regulated enough private health insurance market becomes more difficult to distinguish from a market either largely made up of or dominated by public health insurance.
Except, of course, both are Communist system approaches caused by ACORN, the Tides Foundation, Woodrow Wilson’s progressives, and a government plot to nationalize 400% of the USA economy.
Punchy
Very sad but true.
liberal
The usefulness of the market critique is zero when you realize that, empirically, both health insurance and medical care markets are rife with market failure. Of course, that assumes your ideology allows you to think that markets can fail.
inkadu
@Redshift: See if you can find “Sick Around the World” on the PBS website. It describes a few different styles of universal healthcare from Europe to Taiwan.
From what I remember, Germany is the system that keeps private health insurance company; it seems a bit like what we have with ACA but the insurance companies are much more heavily regulated and, if they’re allowed to profit it’s limited.
Germany’s system is also the most expensive (big surprise). But, basically, you can’t generalize “European” health care except to say that people aren’t allowed to die and they aren’t allowed to go bankrupt merely for being sick.
Here it is… Frontline, of course.
Bob
@John Cole:
Blame Freddie, he started it.
burnspbesq
@John Cole:
And quite proud of it’s shrillness. I think E.D. is trying for induction into DeLong’s secret and hermetic order of the shrill.
Dean Baker is also shrill today.
guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/feb/01/economy-economics
aimai
I wish the dems would hold “town hall” meetings to demand that the republicans come forward with a specific plan. This would enable them to go over the good parts of the ACA and remind people again and again that the Republicans are proposing to repeal or kill it without offering a plan to replace it. I saw somwhere that people were organizing “meetups” again on home foreclosures. I wish we would do it with health care except that I think that people who are really in the trenches don’t have much energy to come out to meetups. But if it could be done without party affiliation in the first place I’m betting that a whole lot of poor white people–not yet on medicare and social security–would come out to bitch about their lack of coverage.
aimai
ET
I just “love” the quotes from new GOP reps about their healthcare on Steve Benen’s blog.
liberal
@burnspbesq:
So? Why should we follow the lead of those countries? OECD data imply they’re not particularly cheap.
Mnemosyne
@Barb (formerly Gex):
How do you think Social Security got started? Southern Democrats agreed to vote for it once women and black people were all but excluded.
inkadu
When the Titanic went down, people in steerage waited patiently while the first class passengers boarded the few life boats before them.
Just imagine people allowing themselves to die without complaint while others are allowed to live merely for having more money. Pretty unbelievable, huh? Things must have been really messed up back in the day.
E.D. Kain
@John Cole: shrill might be a bit of a stretch but I can honestly say that the whining from Graham had me feeling shrillish. Which ought to be a word.
liberal
@inkadu:
Not according to OECD data, in terms of fraction of GDP, AFAICT. But yes, it’s relatively expensive, dropping the pathetic US outlier as usual.
kay
Good post, E.D. It’s infuriating to me, because they’re playing another game here.
They won’t put up a proposal because a proposal can be evaluated. They’re quite deliberately keeping this in the abstract.
Republicans scored a bill that allows insurance purchase across state lines in 2005. The CBO estimated it would have no (net) effect on numbers of uninsured, and would save 5% on premiums. All of those savings came from less coverage.
That’s why they aren’t putting anything specific up. Because the public could then do a direct comparison between the Republican “solution” and the ACA. I think they’d choose the ACA. But how can they compare?
This isn’t a debate. It’s Republicans countering real things, like the medical loss ratio, with words like “liberty”. It’s nonsense.
I’m asking them for one thing: a concrete and complete health care reform proposal. I want that, because I think the Democrat’s approach is better, and I’m willing to compare, line by line. They won’t give it to me, because they don’t want people to compare.
liberal
@burnspbesq:
Good old Baker, he who correctedly called the dot com and housing bubbles based on simple arguments about fundamentals.
cleek
@Barb (formerly Gex):
i dunno…
The Base doesn’t even know what the ideas are.
i think The Base rejects them because The Base has been convinced that Obama is the embodiment of evil and therefore everything he does (even though Congress wrote ACA) is evil and must be opposed.
remember, the GOP was planning on health care reform being Obama’s “Waterloo” nearly a year before ACA was passed. the GOP’s goal has always been to oppose HCR simply to damage Obama. the merits of our current system, or of any proposed changes are essentially irrelevant. any chucklehead can come up with plausible-sounding reasons to oppose something, and plausible-sounding is all you need because The Base is always about the team, not the policy. give them slogans to chant, talking points to parrot, wind them up and let ’em go.
gex
@batgirl: And it is in competition with more universal and affordable health insurance options. Celebrating what private insurance does in Europe only makes sense if you acknowledge the fall back position – public insurance.
But you have to look for the magic market fairy wherever you can, even when you aren’t talking about a real free market in the first place.
liberal
@evinfuilt:
Depends if it’s based on good science. A lot of medicine, including preventive care, isn’t, and is just a waste of money.
burnspbesq
@El Cid:
The notion that insurers “can’t profit” from the basic coverage is a politically useful canard that dies a mercifully quick death when it crashes into the brick wall known as accounting. Any accountant worth his or her salt can play games with allocation of overhead expenses in ways that make any part of a company that engages in multiple lines of business profitable, unprofitable, or break-even.
It’s also useful to explore just what it means for a company to “not profit” from selling the basic coverage. Does that mean that 100 percent of premiums is paid out in benefits, or does it mean that a more conventionally determined loss ratio (claims paid divided by the sum of premiums and claims processing expenses) has to be 100 percent? How is investment income accounted for? What about IBNR reserves?
Shorter me: the bottom line (pun intended) is that these companies must be making a return that they consider adequate on the capital that they devote to being in this business, or they wouldn’t be in it. Numbers can be made to lie, but actions speak louder than words.
kay
@aimai:
They could do it. There’s the 2005 GOP “across state lines” proposal (which is damning and actually quite scary, in that dry CBO language, so we don’t even have to make shit up) and there’s reams of state info on tort reform, none of it points to any kind of “magic bullet” with federal tort reform.
Republicans won’t put anything specific up, by they have done so before.
Across state lines” isn’t new, and tort reform is actually in effect. I’d actually love to do the tort reform because the “laboratory of the states” results are IN and it doesn’t support their argument.
So much for “if it works in the states let’s take it national”. It doesn’t work in the states and they’re still trying to take it national.
catclub
@E.D. Kain: “What irk me is people saying Obama has been in charge for three years. ”
I think to the people who are saying it, it seems even longer. Its like Einstein said about relativity:
“Sitting in a dentist’s chair, a minute can seem like an hour. Sitting with a pretty girl in your lap an hour can seem like a minute.”
Also: “Radio is a like a very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and he meows in LA. Except there is no cat.”
gex
@cleek: I guess that was my point. The othering has been so complete, that tribal identification with the GOP is all that is necessary to know how to think now. The ones who knew what they were doing have all been replaced by the ones who bought it hook line and sinker. But it is still at the heart of it.
inkadu
@liberal: Dang. People know their stuff here. But, anyway, you know what I meant.
gnomedad
Somewhat apropos:
Republicans Vote To Repeal Obama-Backed Bill That Would Destroy Asteroid Headed For Earth
burnspbesq
@gnomedad:
It’s a sad commentary on where we are as a country that I actually had to click on that link in order to be sure it was The Onion.
martha
@burnspbesq: Be careful, you’re telling business secrets that all successful businesses use and should be kept hidden from the unwashed masses :)
Mnemosyne
@burnspbesq:
They make their money from the supplemental insurance, which is not used for everyday healthcare. It’s for extra items, like private hospital rooms, that most people will rarely use.
IOW, the stuff they can make a profit on is true insurance, like car insurance, to cover unusual circumstances. It’s actually in their interest to have high-quality everyday healthcare that they don’t have to make a profit on because healthy people are unlikely to use their benefits, so those extra insurance policies are pretty much pure profit for them.
Stillwater
I approve of this message! Douthat is one of many conservative
propagandistspundits who needs to be called out publicly for transparent bullshitting in defense of a bankrupt ideology. As El Cid pointed out upthread, the current plan is a conservative plan. Douthat could end the waiting game by simply endorsing Obamacare! But policy and immutable truths discerned by scanning his intestines takes a backseat to politics for intellectual degenerates like Ross. And so the answer to the question of how long will he wait for a conservative alternative is predictable: as long as it takes.gene108
@Erik Vanderhoff:
Bush, Sr is a RINO (Republican in Name Only). He and his ilk do not nor have they ever represented the values of true Republicans.
Why Democrats and Liberals don’t get this is beyond me.
So an impostor came up with an idea, it doesn’t make it genuine. A $5 dollar “Rolex” you buy on the street corner looks like a Rolex, but it sure as hell isn’t the real thing.
That’s what Bush, Sr. and his ilk are. Cheap, fake knock-offs of real Republicans.
Anything they say and do cannot be considered to have ever represented actual Republicans, therefore the 1993 plan you talk about as a being a Republican plan was never a Republican plan.
It was a plan created by fake Republicans, therefore there is no hypocrisy in hysterically opposing
RomneyCare“Obamacare”.burnspbesq
@Mnemosyne:
“They make their money from the supplemental insurance, which is not used for everyday healthcare. It’s for extra items, like private hospital rooms, that most people will rarely use.”
You missed the point of my comment, which is that any sentence that begins “They make their money from …” is nonsensical.
batgirl
@burnspbesq: And you miss the point of every response to you that private insurance in Europe (what it is, how it is used, how it is regulated) is a very different beast than what we talk about here when we talk about private insurance functioning in the health care market.
ETA: By “here” I mean the United States.
Brian
John Cole should back me up on this, given his slap-fest with the Queen Firebagger on the Public Option: The Democrats have not controlled the Senate for a long time (the 95th was the last time there were 60 or more Dems, but times have changed in a most filibusterishous way). As we all know, 50+ seats is not control of the Senate in recent times. 60+ is, and that assumes you have actual Democrats and not clowns like Holy Joe.
Also, too, an interesting piece on the efficacy of preventative care.
JGabriel
@gene108:
Who are you? I can’t decide if you’re just being sarcastic, or if you’re a real live wingnut who actually believes that. Please clarify.
.
RSA
Well put, E.D. I can’t think of any market that would guarantee a product of a specific minimum quality to everyone who wants it, regardless of their ability to pay.
El Cid
@burnspbesq: Sure, but making any profit (which the government is going to understand, and which I do as well) is very different from making another rate of profit. Plenty of non-profits make tons of money; I’ve worked for some that have that structure because it was a better way to land certain contracts.
Governments have accountants too, and can review records. And also are familiar with many things that businesses can do regarding the flow of money in, our, and around.
So, it’s not just a “political canard”, unless it’s assumed that everyone means the most absolute definition of zero profits.
If the suggestion is that no governmental enforcement of regulations requiring, say, the spending of 100%, or 95%, or whichever amount in between, of premiums on actual care is possible in any meaningful way because accountants can play with bookkeeping, then that may even be sillier.
gene108
@JGabriel:
I’m not being sarcastic. I’m just dispensing wing-nut “logic”. Every time I hear someone claim Republicans did it too or it was a Republican idea and you guys are hypocrites for opposing it, the right-wingers basic response is “those guys are RINO’s, so it doesn’t count”.
Trying to say right-wingers are opposing a Republican idea falls flat, because to the modern day right-wingers those Republicans should never have been Republicans.
It doesn’t matter what it is. If some Republican in the past supported something – other than Saint Reagan of course – that conflicts with Baby Jesus and tax cuts, those guys should never be counted as Republicans, therefore there will never be any hypocrisy in attacking whatever it is wing-nuts attack.
Another way to look at it is there are no ideas, which are true and correct for my wing-nut brain to think, other than what Beck, Limbaugh and Fox News are telling me to think right this instant.
All other ideas are heretical to my values, no matter who had them first.
Stillwater
@gene108: Cheap, fake knock-offs of real Republicans.
Exactly. Why can’t the cruel world just leave conservatives alone, instead of forcing them to compromise their values by actually crafting policy?
Mnemosyne
@burnspbesq:
Sorry, I didn’t realize that you’re also an expert in accounting law and practices in both Switzerland and the Netherlands. Why don’t you explain for us how those laws and practices differ from the ones we have in the US and which of them are the same as US laws and practices?
You do realize that other countries don’t have the same laws as the US, right?
Short Bus Bully
Best post I have seen you put up here E.D. Solid take down in all respects without excess snark. Should be required reading for everyone in the healthcare debate.
E.D. Kain
@Short Bus Bully: Thanks!
Bob
@Brian:
Thanks for the link. I never understood how that meme, preventive care saves money, became so widely accepted.
WereBear
One of these days, I’ll write my Utopian Science Fiction novel, wherein corporate crime is treated like crime.
Hmmm, where’s the conflict?
Judas Escargot
@Barb (formerly Gex):
Since Atwater, all the right has done is yell “DONT TAKE MY MONEY AND HELP BLACKS!” The ones that have fully bought into those economic ideas yet have discarded the racism are called libertarians. The ones that keep the racism are called conservatives.
Pretty much this.
I’ve spent 15 years trying to come up with better/more logical/less horrible reasons for the rise of the Blue Collar Birchers– but no, I was being naive. This was it, all along.
JGabriel
@gene108:
Ah, okay. Yet another instance of being unable to tell the difference between a parody wingnut and a real one.
A flawless imitation, sir/ma’am. I salute you.
.
Stillwater
Hey Douthat, why don’t you write something like this? It only took me about 60 seconds!:
Sounds like socia1ism, doesn’t it?
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
2nded. Well written too. Nice arc to the whole post.
sparky
to me this post conflates two distinct things: politics and policy. given the now-well-established fact that a non-trivial bloc of the electorate is rather imbecilic, why should one expect the Rs to put up a plan? propounding a plan just leaves the party open to criticism. put more bluntly, why should an opposition party play by your rules?
and as for policy,
1. @Stillwater: you are a great fiction writer, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
2. the notion that insurers like Wellpoint and BCBS are going to compete with each other is pony-worthy.
3.
yes, it’s really worked out well for those ungrateful unemployed. and quelle surprise, capital flowed into… speculation. and, if i may ask, what on earth does “organic” mean in this context?
personally i will be happy when someone finally topples the shrine of laissez-faire, erzatz and otherwise. it’s not a friendly religion.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Judas Escargot: What is unbelievable to me is that to a man (and I use that word specifically) every Republican I talk to and denounce the GOP’s use of racism will adamantly refuse to admit the party is racist. Atwater’s confession and regret. Melman’s apology for past racism (before realizing they’d be running against Obama). Steele’s apology for the GOP’s use of racist campaigning.
I mean, their people flat out admit they use subtle racism to gain support, but still white male Republicans don’t believe it.
ETA: Although there was probably a racist blog comment somewhere from a hippie, so… Both sides, amirite? Blech.
sneezy
This post is remarkably free of magical thinking. Good job.