WALKING BACK THE CAT:

Baucus and the Threshold (PAUL KRUGMAN, 9/18/09, NY Times)

[T]hose who insist that we must have a single-payer system — Medicare for all — won’t accept any plan that tries, instead, to cajole and coerce private health insurers into covering everyone. But while many reformers, myself included, would prefer a single-payer system if we were starting from scratch, international experience shows that it’s not the only way to go. Several European countries, including Switzerland and the Netherlands, have managed to achieve universal coverage with a mainly private insurance system.

And right here in America, we have the example of the Massachusetts health reform, many of whose features are echoed in the Baucus plan. The Massachusetts system, introduced three years ago, has many problems. But as a new report from the Urban Institute puts it, it “has accomplished much of what it set out to do: Nearly all adults in the state have health insurance.” If we could accomplish the same thing for the nation as a whole, even with a less than ideal plan, it would be a vast improvement over what we have now.

The most useful aspect of this column is what it reveals about how warped the Left's priorities have become where health care is concerned. Note that Mr. Krugman, a serious economist in his other guise, doesn't care whether it makes economic sense for everyone to be insured, nor care what sort of coverage they have, nor care about the effects of any of this on actual health, nor on the economy, nor on the taxpayer, etc., etc., etc. Their passions have reduced them to the point where insurance coverage itself, irrespective of its nature, is the be all and end all. They have been consumed by the idea of coverage.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 18, 2009 6:26 AM