My Favorite Writer continues his Hit Piece Roll...

Don't get me wrong.  I love Paul Krugman.  In fact, he's one of my favorite writers.  See that add for Conscience of a Liberal to the right of you?  That book is great and should be required reading for all Democrats.  However, people can be wrong sometimes and I am beginning to question Paul Krugman's objectiveness.  He seems to be on a roll against Barack Obama.  And now I will call him a name:
Purity Troll.
More after the jump...

Now, however, Mr. Obama is claiming that his plan’s weakness is actually a strength. What’s more, he’s doing the same thing in the health care debate he did when claiming that Social Security faces a “crisis” — attacking his rivals by echoing right-wing talking points.

This is just my opinion, but it seems to me that Obama is not so much "echoing right wing talking points" as acknowledging they exist as beliefs held by many Americans.  

Starting on September 28, 1993, Hillary Clinton appeared for several days of testimony before five congressional committees on health care.[3] Opponents of the bill organized against it before it was presented to the Democratic-controlled Congress on November 20, 1993.[3] The bill was a complex proposal running more than 1,000 pages, the core element of which was an enforced mandate for employers to provide health insurance coverage to all of their employees through competitive but closely-regulated health maintenance organizations (HMOs).

What was the response?  Let me remind you:

The 1994 mid-term election became a "referendum on big government — Hillary Clinton had launched a massive health-care reform plan that wound up strangled by its own red tape.

Do I think that is right?  Hell no!  I voted for Bill Clinton for that healthcare plan.  However, I am forced to deal with political reality.  Mandated coverage couldn't be passed with the House, the Senate and the White House all under Democratic control.
Currently, we have been in exile from the executive for almost 7 years now and our margins in Congress are razor thin.  Is now the time to discuss mandated coverage?
Or is the responsible course to make healthcare affordable for all first, making healthcare realistically attainable for all citizens, then press for mandates second?  What do you think?
And for the record, that is not a rhetorical question.  I really do care for all opinions.

•  Tips...

  For healthcare and representative government.

  by Mannabass on Thu Nov 29, 2007 at 10:28:44 PM PDT

•  I said it before i'll say it again ...

  F**k Krugman ...

  Tips and Rec's ...

  by DrMicro on Thu Nov 29, 2007 at 10:30:48 PM PDT

  •  Thanks.

    I do have a lot of respect for Krugman, I simply disagree with his concern.

    by Mannabass on Thu Nov 29, 2007 at 10:32:15 PM PDT

    •  ok ...

      the whole thing is starting to tick me off is all ...

      :)

      by DrMicro on Thu Nov 29, 2007 at 10:33:33 PM PDT

•  The thought about how much

  they could mess up the health care thing bogles my mind daily.  

  Bringing down costs would be enormously helpful and a good first step.  

  I hope all the candidates will listen and choose the best plan and I hope we will have more new Congress people in place who will act, not obstruct.

  by cfk on Thu Nov 29, 2007 at 10:33:01 PM PDT

  •  Amen. n/t

    by Mannabass on Thu Nov 29, 2007 at 10:37:59 PM PDT

•  Its not either/ or

  or at least it doesn't have to be. You can have a mandate and lower costs. In fact a mandate is one tool that helps lower costs by pooling risk.

  Why leave out 15 million Americans when you really don't need to? And when the costs of their healthcare would still be being passed on to everyone else anyway?

  We can have affordable quality universal health care. A mandate helps do that.

  by okamichan13 on Thu Nov 29, 2007 at 10:52:48 PM PDT

  •  I keep hearing this 15 million number...

    Yet I see no math that demonstrates it.  Not being snipy or sarcastic, but do you have a link to the math that justifies that figure?

    by Mannabass on Thu Nov 29, 2007 at 10:55:33 PM PDT

    •  Its fromthe Nation article

      a while back which apparently draws from thinktank studies on this mentioned in the article, comparing JRE and Obama's plans.

      Beyond the number though, why leave anyone out you don't need to when we all end up paying for them anyways?

      There are millions that don't need social security that stil pay into it. Why? Because its a safety net for those who really need it. Would it work as well if only those who wanted to pay did?

      Same with universal health care. And the added benefit of driving costs down.

      by okamichan13 on Thu Nov 29, 2007 at 11:16:01 PM PDT

      •  Sorry its New Republic

        and my link for it has died and I need to sleep..

        but here's a quote from it:

        The best studies out there--by Urban Institute researchers, the RAND Corporation, and MIT economist Jonathan Gruber--suggest that, without a mandate, improving affordability will cover roughly one-third of the people who don't have coverage. Mandating that kids (but not adults) have coverage bumps that up to about a half. Obama's advisers think that, by really loading up on the subsidies--and making enrollment a lot easier by, for example, having an automatic enrollment with voluntary opt-out at your place of work--they can goose that up to two-thirds. But that's getting optimistic--and, even then, you still have around 15 million people who are uninsured.
        In other words, the "mop-up" job at the end would quite likely be more than a mop-up. It'd be a substantial task, maybe even a huge one. That's why most health care experts believe you can't get that close to universal coverage without some sort of a mandate.

        So if it's going to take a mandate to really cover everybody, why not include it up front?

        by okamichan13 on Thu Nov 29, 2007 at 11:21:59 PM PDT

        •  Me too.

          We'll continue this discussion tomorrow...
          Yaaaaawwwwwnnnnnnn.  Sleeeeeeeeep.

          by Mannabass on Thu Nov 29, 2007 at 11:24:21 PM PDT

        •  And this is what Krugman means

          when he says Obama is behind the curve on this and affordability vs. mandating is a false choice.

          Okay, got to go to bed.

          by okamichan13 on Thu Nov 29, 2007 at 11:24:26 PM PDT

•  It IS funny that Krugman is spending so much

  time calling out Obama for what could be misconstrued when he is the one who is misconstruing what Obama said. How about just talking about what Obama has said he will do to SS (eliminating the cap on wages) instead of wringing his hands over what the Republicans will twist it to be?

  We know the GOP will lie, cheat and steal to get their hands on our SS, they have a history of doing just that. Do we need to help them by distorting the plans that our Democratic candidates have to fix an issue that will arise if we don't deal with it before the Republican spin machine convinces voters that SS is doomed to fail no matter what?

  by blueintheface on Thu Nov 29, 2007 at 11:00:08 PM PDT

  •  This is exactly it! n/t

    by Mannabass on Thu Nov 29, 2007 at 11:15:53 PM PDT

  •  Okay, I'll talk about Obama's proposal

    It would transform Social Security from FDR's insurance program in which every income group gets back more than it paid in, into a "rob from the rich, give to the poor" scheme.

    That would paint beneficiaries as "welfare recipients" and destroy public support for the program, IMHO.

    In short: his plan - and Edwards' plan - would destroy the program, when there is no need for any sort of overhaul to begin with.

    by Elwood Dowd on Fri Nov 30, 2007 at 03:45:37 AM PDT

    •  How is getting the rich to pay the same rate

      on all of their money, not just their spare change "robbing them"?

      by blueintheface on Fri Nov 30, 2007 at 11:01:23 AM PDT

•  I think it's just the primary wars

  They affect NY Times columnists too, not just Daily Kos diarists.
  He's found his candidate in Edwards and is now doing his best to promote him while attacking his rivals.  
  It's not just Obama he's going after; he's done a number of attacks on Clinton as well.

  The problem for me isn't just the attacks, but that they haven't been fair.  For example, he attacks Obama for using the word "crisis" in reference to Social Security, but he has neglected to say a single word about the fact that his favorite candidate Edwards has used the exact same word (both in this campaign and as far back as 2002).  That's what tells me he's more interested in playing politics than providing the best analysis.

  by MattBellamy on Thu Nov 29, 2007 at 11:03:58 PM PDT

•  Krugman is a consistenly great advocate

  for progressive economic policy, and an invaluable guy to have on our side.

  He also tends to be a cherry-picker.  You gotta take the good with the bad, I guess.  Today's op-ed is definitely an example of "the bad."

  by Pegasus on Thu Nov 29, 2007 at 11:08:26 PM PDT

•  a link would be nice

  Not knowing the specific charges makes it hard.

  On the 1994 election...I think he's wrong to say that it was a vote for "smaller government".  It wasn't the managerial problems that actually mattered to people about Hillary's plan.  It was cost- real universal care meant taking care of the needs of the "underserved" i.e. poor mostly non-white people shortchanged by the system up to that point.  That was going to ramp up the amount of money needed and diminish the medical attention that elderly white people (who are the people with real money in the health care system) were going to get.  Of course they resisted that.

  The net effect of the building resistance was that the elderly and most conservative Democrats in Congress balked at passing the plan.

  And that was pretty much the last straw for people.  The conservative Democrats who ran Congress didn't want to do much anyway in that ever hotter and nastier and energetically Right wing political environment.  The conservative Democrats in part retired and in part were simply destroyed that November because a lot of committed Democrats stayed home on Election Day- out of disappointment at the inaction, lack of political courage, senility, whatever it was that was going on.  The conservative Democrats were finished as a leading faction, it was plain as day in 1994 that they wanted to keep their power but didn't want to lead anymore.  Leading was getting hard, after all- the Russians weren't around as a useful distraction anymore.

  For mandates with some bloat vs reducing costs first...I think that's an easy one.  I think Krugman is sadly right that the mandates and inefficiency have to come first, the increased efficiency after.  The insurance companies and health care management can't have viable excuses (lack of revenue) for deliberate screw ups and shortchanges in patient care when the mandate-based system starts up.  Better to pump in some excess money early that leads to bloat and corruption scandals, and then you can sic the regulators and auditors on them and order rate cuts.  

  In short, you have to indirectly pay off some crooks- but in return for the loot, you get opportunity to bounce them all out and set the standards right.

  by killjoy on Thu Nov 29, 2007 at 11:38:21 PM PDT

•  You stopped highlighting to soon

  The mandate described in your quote was for employers, not for individuals. That's a substantial difference from the way I understand mandate being used in the Edwards' health plan. And the complexity of the plan (which your quote also notes) was probably equally responsible.

  And simplifying the 1994 election as a referendum on big government is just plain wrong IMO - that's the GOP view. It was a referendum on all the things Clinton was screwing up - failing to deliver health care, don't ask/don't tell, numerous failed cabinet nominations, failure to get an economic package through Congress, plus Gingrich-initiated attacks on people like Jim Wright and the House checking scandal, and allowing the GOP to define the terms of the debate during the campaign.

  by badger on Fri Nov 30, 2007 at 12:07:01 AM PDT

•  2007 is different that 1993

  At the time, the national health care plan proposed by Hillary was too complex and bureaucratic for too many people.

  The famous commercials notwithstanding, many Americans looked at the overall plan and just weren't comfortable with it. Right or wrong, I think a lot of people feared that they would not have their choice of doctor or that the coverage was too basic. The emphasis on HMOs was also a turn off.

  In 13-14 years, we have seen the heath care insurance system become much worse IMO. I suspect that Hillarycare would be much better received today. With the consolidation of physician practices into giant management groups, and the byzantine relationships between medical groups and insurers, doctor choice can be significantly restricted now anyway.

  I think it would be a mistake to judge 2007 efforts to reform healthcare from a 1993 prism.

  by Azdak on Fri Nov 30, 2007 at 12:39:54 AM PDT

•  Is it wrong for me to think that

  mandates are a genuinely bad idea?  Most libertarian Democrats would likely agree.  Not that I am one, mind you, just saying that there is nothing wrong with Libertarian Democrats[as Krugman seems to imply].  

  I've heard the argument made before that it is wrong to impose mandates for healthcare.  I mean, it makes more sense for vehicles b/c people can choose whether or not they wish to drive[though it is not much of a "choice"] but mandated health coverage as a requirement for the simple act of living and breathing seems to me like maybe taking it a bit too far.

  I mean, what happens to you if you don't get the mandated health coverage?  Do they fine you or punish you or throw you in jail?  I need more information before agreeing to any mandates, and until then I am inclined to oppose them.  You see where I'm coming from?

  by terrapin station84 on Fri Nov 30, 2007 at 01:26:42 AM PDT

  •  Any financial mandate in a system

    that virtually ensures you'll be unemployed many times throughout your career is immoral. The so called safety-nets are anything but and always involve bureaucracy and tons of paperwork. People losing their homes and worrying if they can eat don't need their remaining resources skimmed off by government mandates.

    by java4every1 on Fri Nov 30, 2007 at 03:42:31 AM PDT

•  I thought it was a good article.

  He's attacking Obama for his rhetoric, and did so in a responsible manner. Obama was in error in decrying the mandate in Hillary's plan, and Krugman's point about equating opposition to a mandate to opposing (by inference) laws mandating driver's insurance was spot-on.

  by Pacifist on Fri Nov 30, 2007 at 04:23:19 AM PDT

•  Did Krugman forget writing this?

  http://query.nytimes.com/...

  by snout on Fri Nov 30, 2007 at 05:22:19 AM PDT

  •  Holy Sheeeeeeeiiiiit.

    Krugman rambling on about the social security crisis.  I'm beginning to see that op-ed writers are like politicians.  Which way is the wind blowing and what number did I place my chips on.  Sheesh.  Thanks for the link.

    by Mannabass on Fri Nov 30, 2007 at 07:49:59 AM PDT