Why Krugman Is Wrong

I really like Obama, but in regards to his approach to the health insurance industry, he???s way too nice. As Michael Moore???s Sicko revealed, health insurance companies are not in the business of health care because they love Jesus. It???s all about the benjamins. As corporations, they are competing with other corporations, not to bring better products to the consumer, but to bring a bigger return to the stock holder - and the going rate of acceptable return right now is about 30%. (I know. I own a nickel-and-dime portfolio.) I live in Los Angeles. It seems like every month, the Los Angeles Times carries an article about a new health insurance company scandal. All the heavy weights are involved, including Blue Cross, Blue Shield, and Kaiser. . Furthermore, health insurance companies squander huge sums of money on lobbyists, political campaigns and commercials. All these expenses add on to the cost of health care. Furthermore, you article does not consider the Roberts Supreme Court which is nothing more than a kangaroo court for business interests. Should disputes arise between consumers and health insurance companies, the consumer will lose. If the government tries to regulate the predatory practices of health insurance companies, the Roberts Court will strike those regulations down as unconstitutional. You also need to study the statistics released by the WHO. Our country is 37th place in terms of quality health care. Cuba, which occupies 39th place, has a lower rate of infant mortality than the United States.We are also the world???s most expensive medical delivery system. The medical delivery system of France, which occupies 1st place, is cheaper than our system. Obama???s health care proposals might be a beginning, but ultimately, in order for us to have quality medical care, we may need to eliminate the corrupt middle man. (Incidentally, agreed many Americans work for corporations, but many of these Americans are screwed by the corporations they work for. Read Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich to see what I mean..

Krugman called Obama on his false claim that his health insurance plan covers everybody. Obama's response, without naming Krugman, basically lumped him in with all those bad, lying people Saint Barack is trying to wrest the country from, and left it at that. The New York Times already has one columnist (Thomas Friedman) who says everything will be all right if we just sprinkle pixie dust on ourselves and think lovely thoughts, and I'm glad Krugman isn't another. If he seems a bit harsher than Obama, hey, who doesn't? But what has Obama really accomplished in his extremely short career other than getting some hearts racing? Democrats have spent decades dealing with take-no-prisoners Republicans by throwing good will down a bottomless well. We've never even heard the splash. I'm glad Alter is so obtimistic about people with $300 million Golden Parachute contracts rolling up their sleeves for the common man, but I am not.

Bravo, Jonathan... an excellent rebuttal to Paul Krugman that explains exactly what so many of us have been trying to say for so long.

you must have missed the whole Ron Suskind-Karl Rove "we make reality now" story. It is embarassing but true that the corporate heads will lie for money, on television, in Congress, to their wives and mistresses both. Obama is simply trying to avoid having to actually do anything while he romances the rubes with sweet talk and lies, lies he bought used from the GOP like the Social Security Crisis. Krugman and Edwards are right and Hilary Clingtton is the proof.

WHY THE MIS-LEADING LINE ABOUT ROMNEY'S COMMENTS TOWARD HUCKABEE? DID CHUCK DODD WRITE THIS OR SOMETHING? HE'S CLEARLY TRYING TO DOWNGRADE ROMNEY - BUT IT WON'T WORK. MAYBE CHUCK CAN RUN AS VP FOR HUCKABEE IN THE "PITA" RACE FOR ANIMAL ABUSE.

So the link I clicked on (then double checked) said this was going to be an article about Romney making false attacks on Huckabee. May I ask why the link is incorrect? My taste has already been declining as to the legitimacy and accurism of these presidential campaigns, and now I'm really not trusting anything. Could you please get your ducks lined up in a row? Thank you! :-)

I disagree with Mr. Alter's criticism of Krugman's assessment. Although compelling and seemingly earnest Obama is naive. What happened the last time American's were coming out of a period of war at the same time we were experiencing an energy crisis and a recession? Remember Carter. A good man, a great ex-President - but he came into office with a naive outlook that didn't translate well for the American public. We then had to endure 12 more years of Republican rule. Let's not make the same mistake.





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Universal Healthcare is Socialism at the root and at the fruit. We have given our government too much authority over us and we are no longer a nation run by the people. If we allow universal healthcare to become a reality in our country we will be opening the door for the government to control even more of our own life. Bad things happen to people. We have people with hospital bills they can't pay and that is a bad state. But Patrick Henry said "Give me liberty or give me death." We would do well to take this to heart. Because that is what is happening in our own country today. The government is taking away our liberties; our God-given right to of free speech, of free religion, of free thought. We are being told that if we don't conform to a certain idealology that we are bigots, who are closed-minded, whether it be in religion, education, economics, ethics, or morals. The government controls our education system (which has steadily digressed in recent years) our retirement (Social Security will go bankrupt if nothing is done about it ) among other things. Do we really want to give so much power to our central government. Power that will give them the ability to control us in every state of our life? That is just a little food for thought from "Publius."

So, the Krugman article is correct when he calls Bush a terrible President. But when the same brillant person says that Obama is niave he is all wrong. It would sound like your Obama interests at Newsweek are steaming up your glasses and prospectives. If this plan of Obamas is such a good idea why didn't he bring it up when he was not running for President. Or does he only get these great ideas after he decided to run for President

Baraack Obama is a succussful problem solver, having proven his methods in providing health care and ethics reform unimagined in Illinois, until was in the legislature. John Edwards and Krugman are the typical political players that display a George W. Bush "bring 'em on" approach to problem solving that, as we know, never solves the problem. It did not work in Iraq it won't work for health care.

Baraack Obama is a succussful problem solver, having proven his methods in providing health care and ethics reform unimagined in Illinois, until was in the legislature. John Edwards and Krugman are the typical political players that display a George W. Bush "bring 'em on" approach to problem solving that, as we know, never solves the problem. It did not work in Iraq it won't work for health care.

It's a matter of public choice. On one level, funding Universal Health care is no different than funding a military, funding a war, funding schools, funding roads, funding social security, funding clinics.

If the public wants universal health care, so be it. But how is it going to be funded?

Barrack Obama???s insistence that insurance companies coming to the negotiation table are based on an appreciation of the free market. Any unilateral intervention by the government will likely cause extremely undesirable and unintentional effects. For example, when the government sets prices, insurance companies and drug companies will likely reduce the supply of the goods and services. That is, less people will get drugs and insurance. Therefore, Obama???s idea of negotiations between government and private industry to find common ground is smart.

However, as a matter of common sense, negotiations is not enough to fund a universal health care system. Obama has other ideas (based on free market) such as enforcing anti-monopoly laws to encourage competition in the private sector. He wants to spend resources to modernize the the information system, which would not get done without governmental intervention.

However, all of this will not be enough. Alas, The government will need to reallocate governmental spending.

I think both Obama and Edwards have something going for them when they talk about getting us out of Iraq. The money saved from pulling out of Iraq can be used toward funding the Universal Health care.

In response to dewcooper:

The big drug companies as do many other big corporations enjoy a very special perk afforded to them by our rather antiquated copyright system, that slides underneath our fair market system. They have no fear that you will go somewhere else to buy a comparable goods nor do they fear going out of business because there are NO comparable goods in many cases and few if any alternative options for the buyer. If you are dying of cancer and a drug manufacturer has a new experimental drug on the market that will extend your life but the drug will cost $120 a pill would you buy it? What if you find out it only costs the company a few dollars to manufacture! Are you going to say hell no I won't buy it? I don't think so. You have no real choice or option and they know it and are taking advantage of it.

It's a similar story with the oil and petroleum Industries. Is there at this point in time any real opportunity for us as consumers to sya "Hell No" I won't buy that because it's too expensive? I guess I could ride a bicycle the 16 miles one way to work and back each day but you know, I don't see it as a real option and they know it. the best I can do is try to cut back and that isn't easy either.

So my point here is that yes, in a free market MOST products will find a fair market value but there are other markets that are manipulated and exploited and are not fair to the consumer - the phamaceuticals, Insurance, credit card and the petroleum industries are prime examples of this. As individuals we have little if any power. change MUST be brokered by our government. God Help Us!

What I find interesting about some of these talking heads (Alter, but not Krugman) is that they seem to forget the purpose of criticism. It is if you have to be either "for" or "against," and all other viewpoints should follow suit. In my intellectual education, I understood that to be critical is to try to inform those who you criticize. They may not take your advice, but that is on them. It also seems that Alter is being a bit naive. Once we were in the Great Depression, there was obviously a mandate for some sort of large change. Even if the divide between rich and poor is as great now as it was before the great depression, there has been no single cataclysm like the great depression that would make corporations want to sit at the table as equals. They are now too comfortable having "preferred seating" from nearly 28 years of pro-corporation administrations (Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II). We know Edwards would be up for changing this. The question is, and this is what Krugman is getting at, is Obama really up for that change. If Obama is the nominee and becomes president, I hope he has been reading Krugman, not people who have been too easy on im.

The author of this article is a spineless idiot. Edwards and Krugman (who, unlike the author, have credibilty on this subject) are exactly right. Corporate insurance company reps should not have a place at our table (whereas, congress - elected to represent us - should).

Whose country is this anyways? It is clear that our current policy system is disproportionately influenced with corporate interests (when compared to individuals' intrests). Corporate interests are quite easy to understand: make money for the corporation so members are compenated now and into the future. Coporations are not (nor should or could they be) democracies.

Here the rub. Our government is intended to be a representative democracy. Our represenatives, within their legislative duties, are suppose to represent us - "WE THE PEOPLE". Corporations skew this representation (and resulting legislation) by effectively leveraging the influence of the relatively few new fuedal lords that sit high in those corporations. Their power over policy may well be good for business - but may well be bad for "WE THE PEOPLE"

Think about Levis Straus - where managment may well be American, but most workers are no longer American. Which is more important: legislation benefiing the business - or "WE THE PEOPLE".

Though Alter is right on his history (FDR ran as a moderate and became more "radicalized" or "populist" once in office, he is wrong for criticizing Krugman on Obama. I may jsut very well be a Obama supporter, but his middle of the road stances on many very important points makes me wary. There was fierce antagonism towards FDR for his New Deal reforms from the class from which he came, and he may have not gotten elected if he had proposed thte New Deal in his candidacy. But, just because Obama may be taking a similar tone now as FDR did in running in 1932, it does not mean that Obama will autimatically do the right thing once in office. It takes critics like Krugman to make sure that Obama, if he is the candidate and eventually the president, makes good on doing what is necessary for the poor and squeezed middle class in an era where the richest in our society having been getting much richer much faster.