Strawman. The point isn't that health care is not scarce, and you will not find such a contention in Krugman's article. The point is that tens of thousands of Americans die every year from being uninsured, and Mitt Romney is blatantly lying about it.
If you prefer to avoid the term "insurance", tens of thousands of Americans die every year as a result of being subject to extremely severe healthcare resource allocation limitations, relative to the much less severe limitations to which the majority of the public is subject. I agree that the framing in terms of insurance is problematic but I don't see that affecting this particular point.
Our current method of allocating scarce healthcare resources and ensuring minimum care standards is the most idiotic, inefficient, asinine method possible, and huge numbers of Americans DIE as a result. It is straightforward to create better outcomes while spending little, if any, more money.
One candidate has worked towards this. The other has no interest in it, and vows to repeal any improvements that have been made. Yes, I do think that a vote for Romney is a vote to let huge numbers of Americans die in the name of ideology.
I do prefer to acknowledge that resource scarcity causes premature death, rather than claiming that insurance changes or small changes in redistribution policies can fix it.
I further agree that our current methods are insanely wasteful and unfair. I think much of this problem is caused by calling it insurance and trying to insulate people from the costs.
I'm not even claiming that Romney is likely to make this any better. Of course he's lying - everyone is, as far as I can tell. Politicians telling lies aren't newsworthy.
Until someone's willing to take on the insurance industry and AMA, in order to separate out the issues of cost of providing and administering healthcare vs the issue of how much redistribution is necessary to provide some level to everyone, it's safe to expect that anyone who makes any public statement on the topic is lying.
Politicians stretching the truth isn't news. Politicians saying something diametrically opposed to the truth, on an issue of central importance, is still news.
Has Obama ever said anything this outrageous about healthcare?
my outrage meter for politicians lying has been broken for some time, so I'm not sure if "nobody will be compelled to buy coverage" or "there will be no rationing", or "no tax on cadillac plans" qualify, but they seem pretty comparable to me.
If you prefer to avoid the term "insurance", tens of thousands of Americans die every year as a result of being subject to extremely severe healthcare resource allocation limitations, relative to the much less severe limitations to which the majority of the public is subject. I agree that the framing in terms of insurance is problematic but I don't see that affecting this particular point.
Our current method of allocating scarce healthcare resources and ensuring minimum care standards is the most idiotic, inefficient, asinine method possible, and huge numbers of Americans DIE as a result. It is straightforward to create better outcomes while spending little, if any, more money.
One candidate has worked towards this. The other has no interest in it, and vows to repeal any improvements that have been made. Yes, I do think that a vote for Romney is a vote to let huge numbers of Americans die in the name of ideology.
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I further agree that our current methods are insanely wasteful and unfair. I think much of this problem is caused by calling it insurance and trying to insulate people from the costs.
I'm not even claiming that Romney is likely to make this any better. Of course he's lying - everyone is, as far as I can tell. Politicians telling lies aren't newsworthy.
Until someone's willing to take on the insurance industry and AMA, in order to separate out the issues of cost of providing and administering healthcare vs the issue of how much redistribution is necessary to provide some level to everyone, it's safe to expect that anyone who makes any public statement on the topic is lying.
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Has Obama ever said anything this outrageous about healthcare?
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