We have posted many items on the failures of the Obama Administration health care reform plans both our own assessments and those of others. Today from WSJ via the dean of Harvard Medical School: "In discussions with dozens of health-care leaders and economists, I find near unanimity of opinion that, whatever its shape, the final legislation that will emerge from Congress will markedly accelerate national health-care spending rather than restrain it."

More:

Worse, currently proposed federal legislation would undermine any potential for real innovation in insurance and the provision of care. It would do so by overregulating the health-care system in the service of special interests such as insurance companies, hospitals, professional organizations and pharmaceutical companies, rather than the patients who should be our primary concern.

In effect, while the legislation would enhance access to insurance, the trade-off would be an accelerated crisis of health-care costs and perpetuation of the current dysfunctional system—now with many more participants. This will make an eventual solution even more difficult. Ultimately, our capacity to innovate and develop new therapies would suffer most of all.

A while back I clipped a Paul Krugman item ("After Reform Passes") that was classic Krugman: deceptive reasoning. In that item he used the sexualized term teabaggers and death panels to decry those who would decry Obamacaid. I guess we will now have to call the dean of Harvard Med. School a teabagger.
But more importantly and surely most bizarrely, Krugman used Massachusetts as an example of reform working, even as the state’s hospitals are suing the state because payments are so low the hospitals are sinking.
Krugman says:

"But the experience in Massachusetts, which passed major health reform back in 2006, should dampen conservative hopes and soothe progressive fears."

Why?
Because the people like it. Why do the people like it?

More from Harvard’s Dean Flier:

There are important lessons to be learned from recent experience with reform in Massachusetts. Here, insurance mandates similar to those proposed in the federal legislation succeeded in expanding coverage but—despite initial predictions—increased total spending.
More:
A "Special Commission on the Health Care Payment System" recently declared that the Massachusetts health-care payment system must be changed over the next five years, most likely to one involving "capitated" payments instead of the traditional fee-for-service system. Capitation means that newly created organizations of physicians and other health-care providers will be given limited dollars per patient for all of their care, allowing for shared savings if spending is below the targets. Unfortunately, the details of this massive change—necessitated by skyrocketing costs and a desire to improve quality—are completely unspecified by the commission, although a new Massachusetts state bureaucracy clearly will be required.

So...
Why do the people like it?
Because it has been a free-ride thus far. Everyone gets covered, costs skyrocket, but…no pain has yet been experienced by the peeps. Extra stuff is always great until the bill comes due! When the electricity gets shut off, when the lights dim, then the polls will say a bit o different. Sadly, Krugman has opted to deceive readers with his deceptive part-of-the-pie reasoning.

I have a group of friends in Manhattan, they travel in a pack that is devoid of intellectual digging. Their favorite phrase whenever I run into them: “It’s all good, All Good!”
Nothing is all good, and Krugman is a false prophet to send that message in hopes of getting something he very much wants under his Hanukkah Menorah this holiday season--a step towards socialized medical care, damn the costs, damn the coming middle class pain, damn all capitalizm and is uneven distribution of stuff. To every goat the same, no matter the contribution, unless, of course, that goat lives in Gaza!

Finally BRAVE words from Dean Flier:

We should not be making public policy in such a crucial area by keeping the electorate ignorant of the actual road ahead.

Krugman, you listening?
I hope you read the full WSJ Op-Ed by Dean Flier. It is worth 10 of Krugman’s hat tricks!
links:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870443180457453958199405401...

Snow job Krugman:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/26/opinion/26krugman.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=a...

etxtra credit:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/10/26/the_public_plan_del...

http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/04/cancer-survival-health-care-reform-opin...