Health Care BS

A variety of Left-leaning pundits, like Paul Krugman, have attacked Barack Obama for pointing out that simply passing a law requiring everyone to buy health insurance will not address the underlying cause of the uninsured problem.

Less partisan policy types, however, are not so quick to condemn Obama for telling the truth. Robert Laszewski, for example, has a good post in which he declares the following:

On the issue of health insurance mandates, Barack Obama and the Republican candidates are right.

He goes on to state what should be a blindingly obvious fact:

It’s one thing to mandate health coverage, but as we are learning in Massachusetts, the real challenge is making it affordable.

Massachusetts is, of course, having trouble getting all of the uninsured to sign up for its “mandatory” health coverage. Why?

Relatively few have chosen to buy insurance,  likely because they cannot afford the thousands of dollars in premiums.

In other words, Mitt’s mandate is focused on a symptom rather than the disease. I’m not sure Obama knows how to reduce costs via deregulation and the free market, but at least he understands the basic problem.

That’s more than can be said for a number of soi disant policy wonks.