Kristol’s brass
by digby
This comment from William Kristol on this morning’s This Week had me yelling at the TV.
The Rand Corporation says about 800,000 of those people were previously uninsured. Eight hundred thousand out of seven million, the huge bulk of them previously insured.
So big deal. He moved people from insurance plans they liked to — forced them into the exchanges. That’s like saying you’ve got to give the Soviet Union a lot of credit, 200 million people bought bread in their grocery stories. If it’s the only place you can buy health insurance, they’re going to get people to buy health insurance there.
800,000 uninsured people who are now insured is nothing I guess. But more importantly, does he honestly believe we all liked our incredibly expensive, lousy insurance before? What planet is he on?
I don’t know if he’s being sincere or just cynically spouting official talking points but I’d guess that a vast majority of those who switched to health insurance on the exchange got a better deal. Even those who are paying the same or more have more security and better coverage. And every last person in the private insurance market can now go to a website that will never ask them their medical history before selling them insurance. Do these jokers think that doesn’t matter to people?
That is not to say that Kristol’s lies aren’t a problem. After all, he knows that most Americans aren’t in the private insurance market and haven’t had to personally deal with these reforms so they just believe what they hear. The news media has spent more time speaking in abstractions about numbers and quotas and web site hits so they aren’t getting a picture of the reality from them. And since the Democrats, so far, haven’t countered the Koch Brothers ads all over the country all they’re hearing is horror stories. The story of people like me and my friends, people who were “responsible” citizens who previously paid through the nose for bad plans (and lived in terror that we’d get sick and lose everything anyway) has not been told. And it needs to be.
Is there a slimier political operative who cloaks himself in the mantle of intellectual than Bill Kristol? I don’t think so. Case in point:
Whether he personally believes in evolution: “I don’t discuss personal opinions. … I’m familiar with what’s obviously true about it as well as what’s problematic. … I’m not a scientist. … It’s like me asking you whether you believe in the Big Bang.”
How evolution should be taught in public schools: “I managed to have my children go through the Fairfax, Virginia schools without ever looking at one of their science textbooks.”
Just plain slimy….
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