Paul Krugman
The Conscience of a Liberal
The New York Times
February 1, 2008
The Obama campaign sends out an ugly mailer. Sorry, but this is just destructive — like the Obama plan, the Clinton plan offers subsidies to lower-income families. And BO himself has conceded that he might have to penalize people who don’t buy insurance until they need care. So this is just poisoning the well for health care reform. The politics of hope, indeed.
Update: Ezra Klein adds a screenshot of the original Harry and Louise ad — they’ve obviously deliberately copied it. Just to remind everyone, Harry and Louise were the center of the vile smear campaign the insurance lobby waged against health care reform in 1993 — and this time a Democratic candidate is doing the smearing for them.
Ezra also points us to an Urban Institute study that shows that yes, mandates are essential. The key passage:
Voluntary measures would tend to enroll disproportionate numbers of individuals with higher cost health problems, creating high premiums and instability in the insurance pools in which they are enrolled.
I know that Obama supporters want to hear no evil, but this is really, really bad.
Obama does Harry and Louise, again
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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