Via Economist’s View, Paul Krugman provides a typically disingenuous analysis of the congressional deliberations concerning the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and Medicare Advantage (MA). His caricature of the policy choices is delivered via the following tendentious hypothetical:
Program A would provide essential health care to the eight million uninsured children in this country … Program B would subsidize insurance companies, who would … siphon off a substantial fraction … as profits.
Krugman, in other words, would have us believe that the debate about SCHIP (program A) and MA (program B) involves no mere question of policy but a choice between good and evil. It will not come as surprise that, in his telling, Hillary Clinton comes down on the side of the angels while the Bush administration sides with the minions of Mephistopheles.
The problem with this cartoon is that SCHIP is in trouble not because of a wicked conspiracy to line the pockets of insurance executives but because its funds have been diverted from poor children to adults. Moreover, the legislation favored by
MA is not without its problems, of course. As I point out here, there has been considerable skullduggery in the marketing of the program. That does not, however, excuse Krugman’s dishonest representation of the choices before Congress. It would appear that ideology has compromised his veracity as well as his judgment as an economist.
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