Right-wing gasbaggery doesn't have the punch it used to have

[BurtWorm]

Says my friend Jared Bernstein at TPM Coffeehouse:


http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/jul/11/a_disturbance_in_the_force

<A> particularly virulent and lame version of conservative argumentation seems to be falling flat and is far less effective that it was even a few months ago.

...

Though it’s too early to tell for sure, simplistic attacks on what might be called progressive health care plans—plans that to one degree or another take the provision of health care out of the market—have also been ineffective. Because such plans typically mandate coverage, enforce large risk pools, subsidize care for those without means, regulate insurers, and implement cost controls, vested interests are coalescing around the counterattack that such plans are “socialized medicine” run by “big government.”

But I predict that this new “Harry and Louise”—they were the couple advertisers used to kill the Clinton health-care plan—will stumble. For one, the employer-based system, the one through which most working age families are insured, is slowly unraveling, and generating a level of insecurity that insulates the new plans from dismissive attacks. Second, big time Republicans, like Schwarzenegger and Romney, have recognized the difficulties sustaining the current system and proposed such plans of their own. Third, progressive advocates, from Michael Moore to scholarly wonks like Paul Krugman, Ezra Klein, Dean Baker, Maggie Mahar, and lots of others, seem to be successfully breaking through with stark comparisons between our system and those of every other advanced economy, wherein they spend a lot less per capita but have better health care outcomes.

Also, some of the most clever plans, like this one crafted by Jacob Hacker, overtly inject market competition into their framework. Under Hacker’s plan—and many others share this “pay or play” characteristic—employers have to provide coverage, but they can do so through the private market, or they can sign onto a Medicare-like government program. If progressive advocates are right, and government plans are far more efficient than those of the private sector, this approach ultimately reduces to single payer, as private plans are too burdened by overhead, profits, and inability to control costs. If not, well…good old market competition: let the best plan win. That doesn’t sound too socialized.

I myself have been engaged in the debate to raise taxes on those managing hedge funds, i.e., to tax their compensation as normal income (at 35%), not capital gains (15%). No one can say where this is headed—there are hearings on the issue today, and some very well-heeled lobbyists are out in force to kill the idea—but, like the other two examples above, the push for the change has been at least somewhat bi-partisan. Republican Charles Grassley, not a guy you associate with tax increases, is a co-sponsor of the legislation. And when the punditry get together to flap their gums on this idea, the notion that super-rich hedge fund managers face lower tax rates than teachers and firefighters has trumped the usual “raise our taxes and you’ll deal a fatal blow to capitalism.”