Steve Antler, the Econopundit, fisks today’s Paul Krugman New York Times op-ed on the Bush and Kerry health plans. Antler suggests that Mr. Krugman needs a little field work on this issue:
And here of course is where Paul Krugman shows his ignorance of the real world of workers and employers. The problem he warns about is already here. Younger, healthier workers opt out of employer-provided health insurance all the time. Sometimes they expect and get larger paychecks as a result—and sometimes they don’t. This process has already generated higher the higher insurance premiums Paul warns of.
Paul—listen to me. All of this has all already happened.
Mr. Kerry plans to pay for his more generous health care plan by repealing the Bush tax cuts. The Tax Foundation has found that repealing all of the Bush tax cuts would garner the Treasury an additional $70 billion. It’s difficult to see how Mr. Kerry will pay for his health care plan and cut the $450 billion federal deficit in half by 2008 as he has pledged without doing some really serious budget cutting elsewhere. Repealing the Bush tax cuts certainly won’t do it.
