Peter Orszag is totally not my favorite Democrat. After serving a couple years whispering “Don’t spend! Cut!” in President Obama’s ears, he decamped to Citigroup, or Citigang, or whatever they call themselves these days, presumably to serve as Citi’s DC liaison the next time Sandy Weil’s monument to entrepreneurial incompetence needs a multi-billion dollar government handout. But, writing in Bloomberg view, he takes a sledgehammer to Paul Ryan’s newly minted soufflé, smashing his fantasy of a consumer-driven health-care plan for geezers into a thousand pieces.
In Ryan’s fantasy, insurance companies will fight to find ways to provide full coverage for everyone at the lowest possible cost. As Orszag points out, markets don’t work that way. Insurance companies will fight, all right. They will fight to make money. And the way they will do that is to avoid taking on the folks who are likely to cost them money.
Read Pete’s piece, as well as his earlier take, unsportingly titled “Paul Ryan Is Thoughtful, Handsome, and Misguided,” and then decide if you’re willing to take a chance on PaulieCare.
Afterwords
I like Pete’s piece so much that I’m almost embarrassed to link to what I said about him earlier, but truth must be served. Pete, why’d you have to go to work for Citigrope?
