Health Care BS

In addition to being incapable of objective, non-partisan analysis, progressive health care wonks are utterly predictable.  They can be counted on to mindlessly denounce any reform proposal from any Republican—-regardless of its merits.

So, their response to John McCain’s newly fleshed out health care agenda was no surprise. They reflexively repeated their talking points like so many parrots screeching in unison. One of the first to squawk was Jonathan Cohn:

A big problem with this scheme, as critics like me pointed out, was that it wouldn’t do much for people who were already sick. Insurance companies generally won’t offer coverage directly to people with “pre-existing conditions,” since they represent such bad financial risks.

Cohn is, of course, reverting to the hoary adverse selection/risk pool argument that sounds very wonkish and intellectual but which, as I explain here, is based on a false premise. Ezra Klein mindlessly mimics the meme:

Somewhere in the house, a phone is ringing. It’s your old insurance company … Sorry, they say, but your family just doesn’t fit their risk profile … It is a call — or, sometimes, merely a letter — that millions of Americans have received … These Americans are rejected for health insurance because they were sick once.

This dope, in a just world, would be delivering pizzas. Merrill Goozman, on the other hand, does not have Klein’s excuse of sheer naiveté. He knows the truth and still chooses to provide this variation on the disingenuous theme:

What was most notable about presumptive Republican nominee John McCain’s health care plan unveiled Tuesday was the campaign’s unrealistic assessment of its impact on people with life-threatening conditions like cancer, the millions of Americans with chronic disease like diabetics …

Blah, blah, blah, blah … If John McCAin had come out for free universal health care, covering everyone from cradle to grave, these people would have found some cheesy excuse to denounce it.

Why? Because John McCain is a Republican and it is an election year.