Sure, I’m surprised that the Affordable Care Act survived this past Thursday. I thought the mainstream media was going to talk it to death, frankly. Talk about wind-ups … by the time 10:00 a.m. rolled around, I was too bleeping sick of the issue to even care, and let me tell you – that’s quite a distance for me. It’s just that the horserace coverage of every political issue gets under my skin in the worst way. The merits of a given issue are never deeply examined; it’s always he said this, she said that. No way to work out which is closer to the truth.
They did this with health care, pretty much all day. After the decision was handed down, NPR had some guy from Cato and a policy wonk from the administration. Basically just put them in a room and watch 
them spar. Of course, Cato guy is much further to the right than the Obama person is to the left, so it’s kind of a straw man argument at best. How is this news? They pulled the same thing with the “Fast and Furious” faux-scandal. Even though Fortune Magazine blogger Katherine Eban blew a hole in the standard story about this a full day before, NPR, NBC, and other mainstream outlets were still framing the argument the same way – the GOP want documents, Holder and Obama say no. He said, they said.
What about the merits of the Affordable Care Act? I was never a big fan. It is, of course, a conservative idea, like cap and trade – market-based policy designed to head off something saner and more effective. Basically profit insurance in its purest form. Nevertheless, it establishes the concept of national health insurance for the first time, so that’s a minor step forward. The mandate requirement includes a penalty that the Supreme Court has called a tax; there’s a shocker. I wrote about this herein a few times, I think, most recently in March. Arguably any cost the government imposes can be described as a tax. I would go so far as to say that the failure to provide affordable universal coverage is a kind of tax, since everyone ends up paying through the nose as a result of its absence.
The G.O.P. is crowing because it thinks it has a tax issue for the coming election. All I can say is that, for all their bluster, they are responsible for the single largest tax hike I have ever had – their refusal to renew the “Making Work Pay” tax credit cost me $800 last year, as it did millions of other Americans. Where’s your tax issue now, boys?
luv u,
jp
