with an especial dig at Paul Ryan, in a New York Times column titled Death and Tax Cuts.
It is of course interesting that the issue of the Affordable Care Act is again, as in 2009, fueling the anger that is exploding in Congressional town halls, although this time the anger is stoked by the fear of losing coverage.
I do not have deep thoughts to offer about this column. Those reading this post are well aware of what has been happening, many have seen the videos that have gone viral. I will offer a few remarks of my own, although my focus will be on what Krugman offers.
Krugman notes that those who have been most vocal about the evils of Obamacare are for the most part offering nothing to replace it, because they have nothing.
Instead, they’re talking about freedom — which these days is the real refuge of scoundrels.
That is, for those who actually offer a response, because
Actually, many prominent Republicans haven’t even gotten to the point of trying to respond to criticism; they’re just whining about how mean their constituents are being, and invoking conspiracy theories. Talk about snowflakes who can dish it out but can’t take it!
After discussing some of the complaints by the likes of Jason Chaffetz, Sean Spicer, and the Pillsbury doughboy who currently resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Krugman goes after the Speaker. He reminds us that the media has tended to portray Ryan as a serious thinker and an honest conservativfe
That reputation was never justified; still, even those of us who long ago recognized him as a flimflammer have been struck by his utter failure to rise to this occasion.
What Ryan has offered is a flat tax credit regardless of income level, something that would not meet the needs of large numbers of those who first obtained insurance under ACA, would explode again the number of uninsured, and be a windfall to the wealth, which leads Krugman to note:
Funny how that seems to happen in every plan Mr. Ryan proposes.
Krugman goes through in a thorough but summary fashion how the different parts of Obamacare fit together, something Republicans attempting to keep the popular portions while getting rid of the tax and offering “freedom” seem to ignore. There are some basic economic principles at work here — and I note that Ryan and others seem to be oblivious to these belies any argument that they are deep thinkers.
By contrast, Krugman points out the restrictions that are imposed upon Americans — for example, that you have to have insurance and it must meet some minimum quality standards — are what really set Americans free:
For health reform has been a hugely liberating experience for millions. It means that workers don’t have to fear that quitting a job with a large company will mean loss of health coverage, and that entrepreneurs don’t have to fear striking out on their own. It means that those 20 million people who gained coverage don’t have to fear financial ruin if they get sick — or unnecessary death if they can’t afford treatment. For there is no real question that Obamacare is saving tens of thousands of lives every year.
Here allow me to deviate. We are covered under my wife’s insurance as a federal employee in the Congressional branch. It is very much of a gold standard policy, and was one of the benefits of federal employment even before passage of the affordable care act. I remind people that the total nominal cost of her cancer treatment to date is now more than $300,000 over the past four plus years. Absent that insurance, we could not have afforded all of the treatment which has pretty much kept the cancer in remission, and clearly extended the length of her life and deepened the quality. Nor could we have afforded the close to $20,000 for my receiving a stent to control my aortic aneurysm. Yet with all of this, with the many medications we both take (I take 11 pills a day if my blood pressure is controlled, and one or two extra beta blockers if it is not), over the past four years are out of pocket costs related to medical are a bit over $30,000, which was tolerable.
Returning to Krugman, in his penultimate paragraph he turns to the question of why Republicans so strongly hate the Affordable Care Act, and knocks down the straw man arguments they offer before offering this final paragraph:
No, mainly they hate Obamacare for two reasons: It demonstrates that the government can make people’s lives better, and it’s paid for in large part with taxes on the wealthy. Their overriding goal is to make those taxes go away. And if getting those taxes cut means that quite a few people end up dying, remember: freedom!
Of course, there is something unstated in how the Republicans are able to get some people to oppose Obamacare even though doing so actually hurts them. It is to give the false idea that the insurance is going to people who are unworthy, that OUR taxes are going to subsidize those OTHERS, including by implication undocumented aliens, who foolishly are NOT covered under the law (which as I and others have argued creates an unnecessary public health risk).
This flimflammery seems to be fading as an effective distraction, as we are seeing in town halls in very red districts. People realize they have gotten a benefit from government, and do not want to lose it. And when the administration is full of super wealthy types who don’t need its benefits, those are not in a position to make cogent arguments against ACA.
If I might, we saw Betsy DeVos brag at CPAC that she had told Bernie Sanders to his face that there is no free lunch. That is a ridiculous statement for the Secretary of Education to make, given the number of public school children who received Free and Reduced Meals, which while a program funded through the Dept. of Agriculture is distributed through public schools. Perhaps it is because DeVos has no real knowledge about the public schools she is supposed to help administer, and has a history of being hostile to them.
She is not alone in this administration. Whether it is at HHS or at EPA, for example, Price and Pruitt were selected for those positions precisely to blow them up — Steve Bannon made that clear in his remarks yesterday at CPAC.
The focus right now in the town halls is ACA. It is a matter of life and death for an increasing number of people. And that makes them dangerous to those Republicans seeking to dismantle the program.
Read Krugman’s column. It is an excellent primer.