Paul Krugman- Ron Wyden, Useful Idiot

[Huey P. Long]

December 17, 2011, 8:33 AM
Ron Wyden, Useful Idiot
I was too busy and too overstretched to weigh in on this earlier, but Sen. Ron Wyden did indeed do a bad, bad thing in his joint proposal with Paul Ryan. Ezra Klein explains why; and the devil isn’t in the details.

What Wyden did was to give cover to the fundamental fallacy of right-wing attempts to dismantle Medicare: the claim that market competition is the key to reducing health care costs. We have overwhelming evidence on this — and it just isn’t true. Looking both within the United States and across countries, if you ask which systems are best at cost control, the ranking looks like this:

Government provision as well as financing (socialized medicine) > single payer > market competition

Why doesn’t the market work here? Ken Arrow explained it all half a century ago. Patients by and large don’t have the information to evaluate medical treatments; in any case, they mainly buy insurance rather than medical care directly; and insurers profit not by providing the most cost-effective care, but by trying to insure people who won’t need care.

And it’s not as if market competition hasn’t been given a try; in this country it has been tried over and over, by politicians who won’t take no for an answer.

full-
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/17/ron-wyden-useful-idiot/?smid=tw-NytimesKrugman&seid=auto

[senseandsensibility]

1. K and R

Great info.

[me b zola]

2. K&R

:grr:

[Enthusiast]

3. Once again, Paul Krugman is right on the money.

:applause:

[mod mom]

4. So someone as brilliant as Krugman doesn't understand Wyden's move as well.

makes me feel a little better i.e. still confused.

[KoKo]

5. K&R...Supposedly he lives in Manhattan in an over "Mil" Apartment and visits Oregon..once a month...

what can one say about a Rep like that?

And, his list of donors is on "Open Secrets" and a DU'er posted it here. Ron is "in thick" with Wall Street Banksters. His lesser donors are the ones he "toys around with." When he want to look liberal.

And...he does (up until this point) look liberal according to some stuff he's voted on...but like the rest of them...when it comes to supporting "those who funded him" he suddenly becomes Joe Lieberman.

:-(