The day before Super Tuesday economist Paul Krugman dropped a bomb on the Obama campaign. Obama’s health care plan, which would cover about half the uninsured, was deficient, said Krugman: Hillary’s would be truly universal at only a “slightly higher cost.”
Of course, Krugman never questioned the goal of universal health insurance. The vast majority of uninsured people are either well off – more than a third make more than $50,000 per year – or young and healthy – more than a third are between 18 and 34 and don’t believe health insurance is a good investment.
Obama’s plan seeks to insure more low-income people who may truly need better health care. Hillary’s seeks to be universal by requiring that everyone buy health insurance, whether they want it or not.
Krugman projects that Obama’s plan would cost federal taxpayers $102 billion per year, while Hillary’s would cost $124 billion. MIT professors must make a lot more money
Of course these literati weren’t expected to know anything about either the weather or global warming; their mission was to create alarmist propaganda.
The writer from China bemoaned the fact that one part of his country had a severe drought, while in another place, heavy rains caused flooding that killed hundreds of people. Very clever, this global warming. A writer from France claimed that global warming was spoiling the olive crop this year with “a warming trend with freak cold snaps.” One wonders, could that be the same as a cooling trend with freak warm snaps?
A Chilean novelist declared – I don’t think he figured this out himself – that”global warming is melting Antarctica, and as a result large quantities of water will inundate our coastline.” (Thank goodness the water will stay down there!) He did some of his own research too: “An exporter I know told me that this season’s uncharacteristic frosts ruined 40 percent of his crop.” It’s uncorroborated hearsay, of course, but a commendable first attempt at journalism for a writer hitherto specializing in fiction.
And worth a good laugh for readers, to see the editors of The New York Times publish, with a perfectly straight face, the finding that global warming is freezing the dickens out of Chilean avocados. – Jim Payne
Stop thinking about tomorrow – The famous line “it’s the economy, stupid” comes from a list of rallying points Jim Carville wrote on a whiteboard in Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign headquarters:
1. Change vs. more of the same 2. The econom~ stupid
3. Don’t forget healthcare
Having improbably won the 1992 election with this formula, you’d think the Clintons would be familiar with it and able to defend against it. Obama is cleaning Sen. Clinton’s clock by talking about some undefined “change”; Hillary is saying nothing markedly different from the other candidates about the economy; and her campaign must wish the elector-
% for Krugman to think $22 billion, or nearly 22% is be just “slightly” more.
But the big lie is that Krugman leaves out the cost to all those people who will be forced to buy insurance they think they don’t need. Add that and the total cost of Hillary’S scheme will be roughly double the cost of Obama’s plan.
It doesn’t take an MIT economist to see that the big winners under Hillarycare II will not be the poor, who would be adequately protected by Obama’s plan (and have fairly decent taxpayer-subsidized health care now), or the other uninsureds, who will have to spend money on insurance they don’t need. Instead, the real winners will be the insurance companies.
Our current system, which Obama’s plan would expand, gives people health care by taking money from other people. Hillary would compound that sin by coercing people into buying a product they don’t want. Regardless of the coercive aspects, Krugman is being dishonest when he leaves out an important share of costs in order to claim that Hillary’S plan is only”slightly” more expensive.
