Reviving The Krugman Truth Squad
Harvard economics professor Greg Mankiw notes that NYT columnist and former ENRON advisor Paul Krugman, who is reported to have been an economist himself once upon a time, is making up stories again in defense of Obamacare. What caught Mankiw’s attention was this statement by Krugman,
But nobody is proposing that the government deny you the right to have whatever medical care you want at your own expense. We’re only talking about what medical care will be paid for by the government.
NOBODY??? As Mankiw notes, the Center for American Progress (CAP), a noted “progressive” think tank headed by former Clinton Chief of Staff, John Podesta, has already contradicted Krugman,
Thus we also include a failsafe mechanism that would ensure significant savings. Our failsafe would be triggered if, starting in 2020, total economywide health care expenditures grow at a rate faster than the economy. Should that happen, we would empower the IPAB [the panel of experts set up by President Obama's health care law] to extend successful reforms in Medicare and other public programs to insurance plans offered in the health care exchanges and then potentially to all health care plans, such that the target is met. This will ensure that costs are constrained across the health care sector, preventing cost-shifting and maintaining access for all.
In other words, if health care costs, as measured by the government’s own panel of “experts” rise faster than the nation’s GDP (currently 1.8%), an automatic “trigger” would restrict private-pay health insurance programs. Of course, anyone who has looked at the Obamacare legislation understands that increasing demand by more than 30 million persons while reducing supply of servicers to meet that demand can only lead to rapidly escalating costs, especially when the Obamacare projections themselves are based on the double-counted “savings” of the mythical $500 billion. The CAP proposal would purportedly limit overall healthcare cost increases by denying those who can afford to pay for more comprehensive health insurance coverage the option of doing so.
The Obamacare legislation breaks dangerous new ground by authorizing the federal government to force citizens to buy health insurance, a power never envisioned by our Founding Fathers. The “progressive” CAP proposal would take us even farther down that slippery slope by empowering the government to place a limit on what our more productive and successful citizens can do with their private property, the wealth they create, restricting how much coverage the more affluent are allowed to purchase.
Paul Krugman’s misstatements are well known, well documented (http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/225981/krugmans-posthumous-nobel-donald-luskin), and hardly unexpected. Far more troubling is the obvious fact that the Democrats are still intent on instituting a wholesale federal take-over of the healthcare industry, no matter what the Constitution, or the American citizens have to say about the idea. And punishing society’s more successful members in the process.
Tags: Healthcare, Krugman
