#Obamacare: liberal pundits mugged by reality

**Posted by Phineas

"Clue bat"
“Clue bat”

Call it a “teachable moment” for commentators likeΒ Kirsten Powers:

I say, my blood pressure goes up every time they say that they’re protecting us from substandard health insurance plans, because there is nothing to support what they’re saying. I have talked about how I am losing my health insurance. I’m having, if I want to keep the same health insurance, it’s going to cost twice as much. There’s nothing substandard about my plan. All of the things they say that are not in my plan are in my plan, all of the things they have listed. There’s no explanation for the doubling of my premiums other than the fact that it’s subsidizing other people.

They need to be honest about that, that that’s the reason they don’t want to change it. It’s because they’re basically taking the people who are responsible enough to get health insurance in the individual market and asking them to subsidize other people. So they’re taking young healthy people and asking them to subsidize other people.

Now, I actually like Powers a fair bit; she seems like a reasonable liberal, often willing to concede a point or criticize her own side when warranted, all while standing up for her beliefs.Β But, on reading this, I have ask…

Kirsten, where in the heck have you been for the last four years, when the Right has been screaming that this very thing was inevitable? Were you not paying attention during economics classes? Everything has a cost. Everything. And when government creates an entitlement this big, it can’t pay for it by soaking the rich. It has to soak the middle classes, too.

That’s why it’s called a “redistribution scheme.”

I shouldn’t be too hard on her, however; an eye-opening that comes late, but while there is still time for something to be done, is better than one that never comes at all. (c.f., Williams, Juan.)

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)

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