Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (When Is My Check for Reading the Washington Post Going to Arrive)

It's really unfair. In a just world, the journamalistic Washington Post would be sending me checks for reading it.

Today, in the left-hamd ring, we have Ruth Marcus performing the triple Democratic-trashing somersault.

She says that the Bush health proposals are bad:

Ruth Marcus - The Knee-Jerk Opposition - washingtonpost.com: Yes, there are big risks involved, primarily that the already-teetering employer-based system will collapse as healthy individuals use their tax deduction to buy cheaper, private insurance, leaving employers with the older and the sicker. And, yes, it's fair to argue that a more comprehensive approach -- Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has proposed one -- is needed...

She says that it would be insane for all of the reality-based not to presuppose that everything Bush proposes is going to be bad:

This sad situation is largely of Bush's own making. He is reaping the poisonous state of affairs that he helped sow for six years. So many of the president's policies have been dishonest and wrongheaded, so much of his politics has been slashingly partisan, Democrats would be crazy if their instinctive reaction to a Bush plan for fill-in-the-blank wasn't intense distrust...

But still she manages to say that the Democrats shouldn't be pointing out that the Bush plan doesn't look like good health policy:

Listening to Democratic reaction to Bush's new health insurance proposal, you get the sense that if Bush picked a plank right out of the Democratic platform -- if he introduced Hillarycare itself -- and stuck it in his State of the Union address, Democrats would churn out press releases denouncing it.... Democrats -- if they care more about addressing health-care needs than scoring political points -- ought to be finding ways to improve and build on the Bush proposal, not condemning and mischaracterizing it. Given that nothing's going to pass without Democratic approval, what's the risk in engaging in the discussion?

Marcus ignores not only that the Bush health proposals are not good policy, but also that the Democrats are engaging in the discussion. As she herself writes, "Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has proposed" a more comprehensive plan, and "it's fair to argue" that such a more comprehensive approach "is needed."

And, of course, Ruth Marcus hasn't done her homework. She doesn't understand the Bush proposals. An example: She copies a Republican talking point:

The deduction would... [leave] 80 percent of those with employer-sponsored coverage unaffected.

The deduction would indeed worsen the finances of only 20% of those with employer-sponsored coverage in 2009. But it would worsen the finances of about 50% of those with employer-sponsored coverage in 2019. And 90% of those with employer-sponsored coverage by 2030.

Why oh why can't we have Washington Post writers who do their homework? Or don't write about things when they haven't done their homework?

The Washington Post would have better served its readers if it had simply printed blank space where Ruth Marcus's column is, save for a link to Len Burman, Jason Furman, and Roberton Williams, "The President’s Health Insurance Proposal-—A First Look" (Washington DC: Tax Policy Center) http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/411412_firstlook.pdf.

Comments

[David Graves]

The Marcus column does suffer from a certain shall we say dislocation from reality. If she is simply covering the story as if were on an athletic contest on the sports page, that's one thing. (And the sports writers do it better.) The column she should have actually writtten would be something like this: it would 1) have a sentence or two on why health care reform is needed 2) provide insight into the implications of the Bush "plan" and then 3) see what its prospects are in Congress, and actually state why reasonable legislators might find this plan wrongheaded, a half-measure, and a sop to the "moral hazard" crowd. And the fact fact that some of these people might be Democrats is beside the point. Instead we get this waste of electrons and/or newsprint that might be better used to make cellulosic ethanol.

[Ken Houghton]

Ignoring that I'm in that 20% (as are many with a family, and probably more than know it who are single), how is "employer-sponsored coverage unaffected"?

Right now, an employer pays x for health care. This is deductible, so the net cost to the employer is x(1-t). Since it is only deductible, the employer is incented to find the best deal.

Under the plan, the employer would, optimally (not likely in reality), transfer those monies to the employee. This may be tax-neutral--but only in the current year, and only to the extent that the employee is under the cap AFTER the transfer. (If your employer currently pays $11K and you pay $5, they could transfer $16K to you--but that last $1K provides you with only $1K(1-t) of benefit.

So ballparking only those cases where the employer pays more than $15K is understating the cost.

Additionally, the employer is no longer incented to contain costs, since they now pay none of those costs. So in year t+1, the best the employee can hope is for a "plan" that matches the deductions--no matter what cutbacks in coverage it provides.

Either way, more than 20% of the people will need a CV. Probably in both the economic sense intended and the more general, time-for-a-new-job sense.

Best case is a significant impact to corporate profits within five years.

[anon]

A revealed preference argument suggests that you already get a positive net benefit from reading the Washington Post and naming and shaming its journalists... ;-)

[Lewis Carroll]

"Listening to Democratic reaction to Bush's new health insurance proposal, you get the sense that if Bush picked a plank right out of the Democratic platform -- if he introduced Hillarycare itself"

Classic strawman.

[Jonathan Goldberg]

"Listening to Democratic reaction to Bush's new health insurance proposal, you get the sense that if Bush picked a plank right out of the Democratic platform -- if he introduced Hillarycare itself"

If the President suggested Hillarycare the Democrats would do well to hold out for single-payer. Hillarycare was never a good policy proposal; the best that can be said for it is that it was what's left after deciding not to take on the Insurance industry.

[Douglas Knight]

"50% ... in 2019. And 90% ... by 2030."

Yes, health care cost is increasing exponentially. That's the problem, not a simple fact of life. And it's a problem this plan is trying, half-heartedly, to solve, by pushing for catastrophic insurance and trying to create a market in private insurance.

[Barkley Rosser]

Marcus is another of the knee-jerk WaPo columnists, supposedly liberal, who have gone on and on about how there should be a bipartisan deal to save Social Security as well. Duh. She is simply ignorant, but arrogant about it.