An Incoherent Hack
Paul Krugman is upset with Blue Dog Democrats for opposing certain aspects of ObamaCare. In an op-ed titled “An Incoherent Truth,” Krugman claims that the Blue Dogs are making no sense on health care.
Krugman argues that all of the Democratic reform proposals are built on four pillars: regulation, mandates, subsidies and competition. If legislative neotiotiations lead to any of the pillars being widdled too far down, Krugman writes, the four-legged structure will crumble. He scolds the Blue Dogs for chewing on the table legs.
Nevermind that tort and portability reforms, for example, could stand up just fine on their own without needing to be part of a $1 trillion+ Greek temple to the religion of craddle-to-grave nanny statism. According to Krugman, the four pillars of “progressive” health care reform are worthless on their own unless all four are erected together: it’s a take it all or leave it proposition, and if you choose the latter option, get ready to be smeared by the likes of Paul Krugman.
Krugman is unconvinced that the Blue Dogs might have legitimate reasons for objecting to ObamaCare, such as concerns about the deficit. He states that many conservative Democrats voted for the 2001 Bush tax cuts, so how could they really believe in fiscal responsibility? But what percentage of today’s Blue Dogs were serving in Congress in 2001? Besides, maybe some of these “conservative” Democrats appreciate that balancing the budget with massive government expansion plus massive tax increases is not the same thing as fiscal responsibility.
Krugman’s piece even calls into question the integrity of the Blue Dogs:
Maybe they’re just being complete hypocrites. It’s worth remembering the history of one of the Blue Dog Coalition’s founders: former Representative Billy Tauzin of Louisiana. Mr. Tauzin switched to the Republicans soon after the group’s creation; eight years later he pushed through the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act, a deeply irresponsible bill that included huge giveaways to drug and insurance companies. And then he left Congress to become, yes, the lavishly paid president of PhRMA, the pharmaceutical industry lobby.
One interpretation, then, is that the Blue Dogs are basically following in Mr. Tauzin’s footsteps: if their position is incoherent, it’s because they’re nothing but corporate tools, defending special interests. And as the Center for Responsive Politics pointed out in a recent report, drug and insurance companies have lately been pouring money into Blue Dog coffers.
Apparently, “progressive” Democrats are not beholden to any special interests of their own. Krugman tries to distance himself from this “interpretation,” pretending that he is not “cynical” enough to believe it – yet, anyway. Thus he tosses out guilt-by-association and ad hominem attacks, but he is not man enough to own them. Krugman is saying, in essence: if the Blue Dogs (who have a history of being all bark and no bite) don’t end up playing ball, I’ll know their true colors. And then what? Contrary to what Krugman thinks, the Blue Dogs were not elected by a lobbyist straw poll. They typically come from districts that would be difficult for true progressives to win.
Update
At first, Krugman’s argument that all four pillars of Obamacare must be kept fully intact seems rather obstinate. When I think about it, though, perhaps the progressives are determined, once and for all, to overcome the law of unintended consequences. If you take away any one of Krugman’s pillars, the other pillars really might crumble into pieces:
Krugman claims that new regulations (pillar #1) are needed to stop players on both sides from “gaming the system.” On the supply side, Krugman points out that insurers are “denying coverage based on [applicant's] medical history.” Yet insurers would be happy to provide insurance to almost anyone if the price is right. They are not always allowed to charge extra high rates, though, because of existing state regulations. ObamaCare’s solution to this problem would presumably include one or both of the following:
1. New federal regulations would force insurers to cover high risk applicants at artificially low rates. But two of Krugman’s other pillars would make it up to insurance companies by driving up demand: mandates and subsidies.
Or, the new government option = taxpayers would cover the high risk clients. To make it up to taxpayers, ObamaCare is supposed to lower costs for most private clients first through the mandates, which would force 25 year old singles into health insurance pools, and by introducing a ”competitive” public option (pillar 4).
Krugman suggests that new federal regulations would also attempt to stop insurers from further gaming the system by using aggressive and/or illegal rescission tactics. However, rescission affects less than 1 percent of individual policy holders. In some cases, the applicants are the ones “gaming” the insurance companies by lying about their health histories.
Recently, state regulators in California and elsewhere cracked down on insurers that were clearly stretching the law on rescissions, which should keep insurers in line. Often, though, these cases involve difficult legal gray areas. How will federal regulators make the realm of contract law any less perplexing? Or, are we to assume that federal regulators will intimidate the insurers into being very careful about using rescission? But won’t those regulations result in more dishonest applications? In turn, wouldn’t that force the insurance companies to pass on the added costs to their clients? Well, ObamaCare could hire even more regulators and, oh, did I meantion, that’s why we need pillars 2, 3, and 4, don’t you see?
On the demand side, Krugman says that small businesses are “gaming the system” by not purchasing health care plans for the employees – an added expense that many small businesses cannot afford. According to Krugman, ObamaCare will mandate that they do so. As far as I can tell, Krugman has not created a pillar to offset the pains that would be felt by small businesses under ObamaCare, but you know what they say . . . If you’re not at the table, you’re what’s for dinner.
Likewise, Krugman also thinks that the twentysomethings mentioned above are also gaming the system. They must be forced to pay for health care they don’t want (pillar 2), so that ALL of the pre-enrolled health care clients and their insurers can ALWAYS free ride off the previously uninsured twentysomethings instead of a VERY FEW of the latter VERY RARELY free riding off the former. So, how will ObamaCare make it up to the twentysomethings? Well, they don’t have many votes and besides they’re reliable Democrats, so they might not warrant a pillar.
Still, it looks like the progressives might need a few more pillars if they’re going to overcome the law of unintended consequences after all.
Boy this is starting to feel like the democratic version of immigration reform
-Democrats pushing for health care reform got serious jolts last week from critics who warned that their proposed legislation would ‘do little to slow spiraling health care costs’. A group of conservative Democrats vowed that they would join Republicans-
Blue Dogs Rake in the Dollars from the Health Care Industry … The 20 Blue Dogs have taken a combined $6,849,273 from various segments of the health care industry, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics
Thank You !
Let’s put aside some distractions caused by the health industry-sponsored Democrats, and the controversial analysis of CBO on the economic effect of the proposed independent advisory council and how to empower it substantively, get back to focus on how to meet the goal of deficit-neutral.
The House leaders reached a deal on Medicare payments: A “Pay for Value” reimbursement system that rewards doctors and hospitals that achieve the best outcomes at the lowest cost.
As a result, The House gained a lot of votes, a lot of people who were withholding support.
The federal Medicare program insures some 44 million elderly and disabled Americans at an annual cost of $450 billion, almost one-fifth of total U.S. health care spending.
Supporters of the agreement say it could save the Medicare System more than $100 billion a year and improve care, that means $1trillian over a decade. (Please visit http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=820455&catid=391 for detailed infos)
The Times in a July 7 editorial argued “As much as 30 percent of all health-care spending in the U.S. -some $700 billion a year- may be wasted on tests and treatments that do not improve the health of the recipients,” Thus the remaining $239 billions over a decade do not matter.
No one can disagree with this best outcome / evidence-based system, and private insurance, too, will be greatly influenced by this change with the focus on value over volume. !
Dr. Armadio at Mayo clinic says, “If we got rid of that stuff, we save a third of all that we spend and that is 2.5 trillion dollars on health care. A third of that and that is 700 billion dollars a year. That covers a lot of uninsured people.”
THANK YOU !
How do you propose determining in advance of a diagnosis what tests are not needed?
Those who predict massive savings from this must be either ignorant of how diagnosis works or willing to accept a large number of additional deaths as a result of mistakes in not ordering tests under the ASSUMPTION that they would be useless.
Either way, they need to defend their position in greater detail than simply posting assertions.
This is far, far less than liberal Democrats have received from government employee unions, who will be the recipients of massive amounts of the additional spending that will be directed towards bureaucrats under a government-controlled health care system. The same source you cite classifies 35 elements of just ONE of the government employee unions to be “heavy hitters” in campaign contributions, overwhelmingly directed towards liberal Democrats.
If you want to throw around accusations that everyone you disagree with is bought, you should be aware that the exact same accusations can ALWAYS be directed right back at you. The right lesson to learn from that is to focus on the issues instead of trying to personally attack the integrity of everyone you disagree with by claiming they are bought.
“If you want to throw around accusations that everyone you disagree with is bought, you should be aware that the exact same accusations can ALWAYS be directed right back at you.”
No they can’t as I’ve never accepted lobbying money. Liberals and Progressives are not the same as elected democrats. So there is nothing stopping liberals and progressives from pointing out that blue dogs are all actually republicans for whom the money was too good.
Smellerbee- the point is that whatever group of legislators you’re supporting is going to be susceptible to the same charge of being bought (as Jason mentions here, liberal Democrats are highly beholden to unions and others who stand to benefit from the current proposal that they’re pushing.)
So if you want to convince other voters, you’re much better off sticking to the facts about WHY you believe this will be an effective and affordable piece of legislation.
Gee, are BOTH parties fighting who can shrink the fastest?
Saying there is duplication and waste is one thing; eliminating it is quite another. As someone “in the business” I can tell that many know where the problems lie but don’t have the ability to “go after them”. The simple solutions are the one’s that would cause the greatest uproar (and therefore probably add back quite a lot of costs in adjudication)
love it…
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/08/krugman_chokes_on_his_own_bril.html
“…As a participant on a panel recently, spouting once again on the superiority of Canadian health care, he [Krugman] asked the Canadians to raise their hands. Seven went up. Confidently and smugly he then asked them how many think Canada has a bad health care system? Whoops! Most of the Canadian hands shot up!…”
Smear the Blue dogs time. They arent On board the Barak Obama Bankrupt America express then smear em…slander em….trump up charges and FEAR them into line.
Put simply…the GOP has got nothing on the Democrats in the way of fear mongering and threatening everyone into compliance.