Krugman makes it simplistic

Here's Paul Krugman on health care reform-- from "the conscience of a liberal" (rather than from the mind of a Nobel-Prize winning economist in a very different sub-field)-- through his NYT blog (hat tip: American Values Alliance)...

The essence is really quite simple: regulation of insurers, so that they can’t cherry-pick only the healthy, and subsidies, so that all Americans can afford insurance.

Everything else is about making that core work. Individual mandates are a way to prevent gaming of the system by people who don’t sign up until they’re sick; employer mandates a way to hold down the on-budget costs by preventing a rush by employers to drop insurance; the public option a way to create effective competition and hold costs down further.

But what it means for the individual will be that insurers can’t reject you, and if your income is relatively low, the government will help pay your premiums.

That’s it. Any commentator who whines that he just doesn’t understand it is basically saying that he doesn’t want to understand it.

Uhhh, Paul....What about the "wedge" between what consumers pay and what producers receive? What about the massive subsidy of health insurance, leading to far too much coverage and thus, astronomical costs and premiums? How is ignoring the underlying problem going to make things better? And so on...

Or as always, the biggie: What is there from economic or political theory to suggest that a single, grand, federal experiment is preferable to 50 state-wide attempts at reform?

Any commentator who fails to mention these things is...