Paul Krugman: This [is] all about politics and ideology, not analysis. It’s worth pointing out just how completely ideology has trumped evidence in the health policy debate. Politicians [and] many supposed experts on health care made claims about Obamacare that were clearly unsupportable, e.g., [1] “rate shock: [but] we now know that the great majority of Americans buying insurance through the new exchanges are getting coverage quite cheaply. [2] Young people wouldn’t sign up; Obamacare would experience a “death spiral” of surging costs and shrinking enrollment. [But] the age mix of the new enrollees looks pretty good. [There] were predictions of disaster [but] we already should have known that the Affordable Care Act was likely to work; Obamacare was closely modeled on [the successful] Romneycare, and it bears a strong family resemblance to successful systems abroad, e.g., Switzerlands. But a firm conviction that the government can’t do anything useful is now a central part of American conservatism, and the incompetence dogma has evidently made rational analysis of policy issues impossible.
Posted on: Fri, 27 Jun 2014 07:20:21 +0000
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