There was a time, not so long ago, when I praised Republican health care “expert” Avik Roy for his outspokenness on House Speaker Paul Ryan’s atrocious health care “plan” to repeal and replace Obamacare: “it’s curious”, Avik observed, “that extending tax cuts [to the rich] was a higher priority for the House than addressing the fact that the bill will make insurance unaffordable for millions of Americans.”
Yeah, well, times change. Curiously (or not), when the Senate version of the Republican “repeal n’ replace” package came forth, Avik was all two thumbs up! way up! in the Washington Post (“The Senate’s health-care bill could be one of the GOP’s greatest accomplishments”) despite the fact that, as Reason’s Peter Suderman scornfully noted, the Senate bill, like its House predecessor, was nothing more than a “dysfunctional rewrite [of Obamacare] masquerading as repeal.” (And despite the fact that the bill still contains the massive tax cuts for the rich that Avik had previously scorned himself.) A few days ago, I noted that Avik had been hoist on Jonathan Chait’s petard, when Jon noted, in his post “The Defenses of the Senate Health-Care Plan Are Pathetically Dishonest” that Avik coyly declined to answer when asked if he had had a hand in the crafting of the new, “fantastic” bill.
Well, Avik, though he’s traded the WashPost for the NYTimes for his praisin’, is still praisin’, and still coy. In his new post, “The Senate’s Secretly Bipartisan Health Bill”, Roy claims that Mitch McConnell’s Republicans are doing the same thing to the Democrats that Harry Reid’s Democrats did to them back in 2010: shutting them out of the formal drafting of the health care package while stealing some of their best ideas:
“In 2010, when Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act, Republicans complained that they did so with no Republican support. Democrats responded by pointing out that the centerpiece of their plan — tax credits to buy private insurance — came from a Republican governor, Mitt Romney of Massachusetts.
“Something similar is happening today. Democrats are denouncing the partisan nature of the Republican effort to repeal and replace Obamacare. They’re right to note that if the new bill passes the Senate, it will do so along party lines.
“But the core planks of the Senate Republicans’ health bill — the Better Care Reconciliation Act — borrow just as much from Democratic ideas as Obamacare borrowed from Republican ones.”
Well, that is such a goddamn bald-faced lie, particularly coming from a guy whom I have praised, though not precisely to the skies, that I feel I have to call Avik out for it. The Obama Administration begged for Republican support on every issue, and health care in particular, desperately, sometimes even pathetically, seeking even a minimal show of support, but the Republicans, following its “turn ‘em down, burn it down” policy established by the likes of Newt Gingrich and William Kristol1 at the dawn of the Clinton Administration, gave them absolutely nothing. For Roy to claim that two cases are “similar” is so dishonest that, well, there’s no point in even bothering to critique the rest of Roy’s column. Looks like ole Coy Roy is metamorphosing into Lyin’ Paulie Ryan, the citified snake-oil man.
Afterwords
Over at the American Conservative, one-time supply-sider Bruce Bartlett describes, in a long column written back in 2012, what happens to right-wing policy wonks who go off the reservation. I guess that won’t be happening to Avik.
- Kristol argued that Republicans should oppose the Clinton health care plan even if it was a good one. If the plan was good, it would make Americans happy, and they would reward the Democrats, and then where would we be? Out in the cold. Now Bill’s so disgusted with what the Republican Party has become that he’s shopping for a new party. Or, I guess, a new petard. ↩︎
