Krugman: republicans can't handle the health care truth

[pampango]

They Can’t Handle The Health Care Truth

Aaron Carroll talks about the Republican health care dilemma, and makes a good point: it runs deeper than the specific fact that Obamacare looks the way it does because it has to. At the most fundamental level, you can’t guarantee adequate health care to everyone unless the people who don’t need help right now — the young, healthy, and affluent — are induced, one way or another, to contribute to the care of those who do need help. You can do this purely with taxes, via a single-payer system (and maybe even by having the government act as provider), or you can do it, Swiss or Massachusetts style, via a combination of regulation, taxes, and subsidies. But some way of corralling the lucky healthy into contributing is necessary.

For the vast majority of this group, this is still a good deal — as Ezra Klein says, nobody stays young and healthy forever, and only a very small number of people are so rich that they are better off on a lifetime basis with no guarantee of insurance at all. But conservatives balk at the notion of any kind of redistribution, even if it makes almost everyone better off. So they are unable to come up with an alternative.

What they have are fantasies — claims that somehow unleashing the magic of the marketplace can make health care so cheap that everyone can afford it. There is absolutely no reason to believe that this is true.

And this also means that their only chance of defeating Obamacare was to stop it before it went into effect. Once it’s in place, most people will see real benefits — and Republicans will have nothing to offer instead.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/they-cant-handle-the-health-care-truth/?_r=1&

[truebluegreen]

1. Clearly why they are so demented on the subject...

they painted themselves into the corner.

[Thinkingabout]

2. Someone the GOP is going to try to explain ACA is their idea or at least Romney's idea.

They know the portions which have gone in effect are very popular with the voters and to take those portions back will pull more votes from the party.

[seabeckind]

3. Meh...

I think the assumption is that the opponents to the healthcare might have a conscience.

They don't. They care about money. The longer they can delay...the more they make. If they eliminate it...they make even more.

It's ALL about money.

Afterthought...and they don't care if what they are doing doesn't make sense. They don't care. Playing stupid is a delaying tactic and that's all it is.