Supposed conservative healthcare “Wonk” Avik Roy (I use that term in quotes because it is actually used with village idiot and Ayn Rand fanboy Paul Ryan) challenged people on twitter today.
You see Roy has made a career in wingnut welfare. He flacks for the wealthy and comes up with bullflop “solutions” to health care issues that are a lot of smoke and mirrors but maybe sound good to the media. It also allows Republicans to pretend they have well thought out solutions to this issue. Roy’s general solution is that everyone gets a very high deductible catastrophic coverage plan. This of course will then allow the magic of the invisible hand of the market to lower prices for everyone. You see you have to have “skin” in the game.
Now let’s not get into the weeds here of how the inelasticity of the demand curve in healthcare means that it really can’t function like the fast food market or how absurd it is to think it improves the lives of the working poor to take away their Medicaid to give them a credit to buy a super high deductible plan that covers nothing. The point is Roy is simply in the pay of the uber rich to produce or pretend to produce health care solutions that involve screwing the working poor.
Well today Roy tweeted the ultimate strawman:
Idiotic Tweet
Here is the text:
“I’m very open to thoughtful critiques of the Senate bill from the left. “MILLIONS WILL DIE” is not it.”
Suffice to say that the Harvard studies and others have shown that tens of thousands will die a year from this. It would eventually add up to millions. But that is silly strawman he set up. And anyway if those dead sick people had only worked harder they wouldn’t be in this mess.
What is funny, is how his tweet was filled with actual wonks pointing out how stupid this is, and providing Roy with real policy criticisms. Go check it out.
The key here is Roy is not really listening to this. He wants to maintain his reputation as a wonk. Trying to defend a huge tax cut bill to the rich and then pretending it is a serious health care bill is what his bosses want. This is all just part of the smokescreen of maintaining his “Wonk” status.