Mona Charen, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a contributor to the National Review, has a problem, almost an ethical problem, one might say. Writing in the Review regarding Lyin’ Paulie Ryan’s House Speaker Paul Ryan’s plans to repeal and replace Obamacare, Mona says “… compared to the current law [i.e., Obamacare] the bill is too hard on the working poor, and too generous to those on the upper end of the scale. As health-policy guru Avik Roy has objected, the subsidies AHCA offers to those making between $75,000 and $150,000 are actually more generous than Obamacare’s subsidies. For the working poor, by contrast, who make too much to qualify for Medicaid, the subsidies would be much smaller and probably inadequate.”
Gee, a Republican plan that, you know, comforts the comfortable and afflicts the afflicted! Whoever heard of such a thing?
Afterwords (sarcastic)
In the best of all possible worlds, Ethical Mona informs us, there would be no Obamacare, no Medicaid, no Medicare, no employer-sponsored health care, nothing but the free market, red in tooth and claw. But you can’t have everything!
Afterwords (even meaner)
Not to be too rude (that is to say, not to be ruder than is warranted by Mona’s nonsense), what Mona is actually recommending—that Paul Ryan go back and make his bill not so awful—is ridiculous. As most people who are following this know, House conservatives are mad because they want no subsidies at all—because health insurance subsidies amount to another entitlement—while Senate moderates are mad because the bill isn’t generous enough. Sen. Rand Paul is a bit off on his lonesome, because he wants to know, why can’t we have the best of all possible worlds! You can, Mona, you can! If you can dream it, you can do it!
Afterwords (conciliatory)
If Mona thought about it a little, that a “free market” for health insurance would mean no health insurance for geezers, because they’re more trouble than they’re worth—all they do is get sick! and it takes them like forever to die!—she’d probably realize that she doesn’t mean what she says. I mean, she’d probably realize it.
