What a Tool

Time for an ad hominem attack. Today's target is TNR's Jonathan Cohn. Cohn is a very serious minded young man. He has appeared on Kudlow & Company a few times and is the archetype of the young, idealistic, progressive journalist/activist. I'm sure he's a bright guy: TNR's a good gig. And, in full disclosure, I must admit to being extremely jealous of his hair. He makes Senator John Edwards look like, er, me.

I called him "a tool;" I am borrowing that epithet from Don Luskin. Half its meaning is that he is "a tool" for the progressive cause. On Kudlow, or in TNR, he can be counted on to spout whatever orthodoxy will promote the progressive cause. Wage disparity, the "debacle" in Iraq -- whatever the occasion calls for. The other half-meaning of that sobriquet is a little more of a personal attack. I think Luskin uses it in the same split sense.

Today, in TNR (free link -- I'm pretty sure I'm not re-subscribing in the near future), Cohn has a piece called RudyCare, but the subtitle says it all: "Why Giuliani wants millions of Americans to stay uninsured." Cohn, I see, has written a book on health care (sadly, at #6,878 it outsells Arnold Kling's). He wears his heart on his sleeve in his column. Any alternative or delay to full socialized medicine is a mistake.

Both Gratzer and Pipes are Canadian by birth. Both have spent enormous time warning people that health care in their country means long waits, no cutting-edge care, and maddening bureaucracy. And what's true of Canada, they suggest, would be true of any system giving insurance to everybody. "A universal health-care system run by government will reduce the quality and access to health care for all Americans," Pipes wrote for National Review Online in 2003. "It's a prescription for disaster."

This is a pretty good harbinger of how the debate over universal health care will play out should it become a huge, all-encompassing fight in 2009, just like it was in 1993 and 1994 when Bill Clinton tried it. Conservatives will promise a little help, for some people, but mostly they'll tell scare stories about universal health care.

That's Canada, but it's swell in Switzerland and Sweden and France and we cannot bring it here fast enough to suit Cohn. Giuliani wants people to not have insurance (that bastard!), but the column strangely enough never does tell us why.

But we know. Republicans. They hate the poor.

Health Care Posted by jk at August 2, 2007 11:47 AM