Hoisted from the Internet from One Year Ago: Whence the Right-Wing Confidence Back a Year Ago in ObamaCare's Failure?
Please read:
and tell me what is going on here. Anyone have any plausible answers for me?
The lack of any public or even private willingness to mark one's beliefs to market is amazing. As is the inexorable and irresistible desire to call the pitch a strike before the pitcher has even walked to the mound.
It's not as though either Cochrane or Epstein has the confidence that would have been created by a lifetime of calling the balls and strikes more accurately than anyone else that might have motivated such hubris.
Nor do either of them have any standing other than that that comes from a perception of being smart. One would think one would guard that by trying really hard not to say things that are really stupid. And one would think that they would have matched outcomes to their ex ante subjective distributions enough in their lives to correct for the possession-of-knowledge syndrome fact that your subjective probability distributions tend to be much too tight when you know something about a subject.
Or perhaps I have gotten it wrong?
Perhaps both Cochrane and Epstein believe that their real standing comes from being not smart but both (a) really clever and (b) really ideological--that their standing comes from their auditors' confidence that their arguments and positions (c) won't necessarily be correct but (d) will conform to their expected ideology and (e) will not be prima facie, ludicrously, and easily and immediately seen to be wrong.
The problem is that the (e) part no longer seems to hold...
And I get that for Epstein the root animus is the status insult at being put into the same category as females--that community rating is a mighty infringement on his liberty because it forces him to buy gynecological care as part of his essential benefits package. But the root emotional animus has to be translated into arguments and thoughts somehow, doesn't it?
Timothy Fisher (January 2014) Diary of a Republican Hater: Is John Cochrane Confident Enough of Obamacare's Failure?: "He had a recent post entitled...
..."What to do when Obamacare unravels: http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2013/12/what-to-do-when-obamacare-unravels.html."
This is something that all the Obamacare hating fanatics have in common-they are certain of success, never mind the facts. I mean there have been some positive developments since the admittedly very rough October rollout.
On the other hand one difference between Cochrane and many other opponents is that he at least claims to have a plan for 'when it certainly will fail':
This fall's website fiasco and policy cancellations are only the beginning. Next spring the individual mandate is likely to unravel when we see how sick the people are who signed up on exchanges, and if our government really is going to penalize voters for not buying health insurance. The employer mandate and "accountable care organizations" will take their turns in the news. There will be scandals. There will be fraud. This will go on for years.... Without a clear alternative, we will simply patch more, subsidize more, and ignore frauds and scandals, as we do in Medicare and other programs....
Yet:
Perceptions about health reform are in an interesting place. Just about everyone on the right is still living in October, the annus horribilis of Obamacare (yes, I know it was just a month, and I don’t care), and is waiting to move in for the kill after the whole thing collapses. Meanwhile, a funny thing has been happening: enrollments surged this month, to such an extent that the original expectation of 7 million people signed up via the exchanges by the end of March no longer looks crazy: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/30/obamacare-not-a-total-disaster-continued/?_r=0
As for the idea that the mandate will be a disaster... it wasn't a disaster in Massachusetts, so why will it be nationally?... [And would] folks like Cochrane... hate it so much if a Republican President had given us ACA--after all it was originally the conservative alternative to single payer....
What we need, Cochrane believes, is to submit healthcare to market discipline much as we did the airline industry.... Yep, there's surely no difference between these two industries-what did Kenneth Arrow know? http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/08/kenneth-arrows-on-market-efficiency-in.html
Plus:
Richard Epstein (November 2013): Obamacare’s Death Spiral: "It has been a tumultuous two weeks since I last wrote...
...about Obamacare’s moral blindness. The President’s dismal performance since that date... refused to take full responsibility for the key policies... endorsed naïve short-term fixes... [done] nothing to correct the fundamental design flaws of the Affordable Care Act....
Should the President’s new proposals be subject to attacks under the oft-discredited doctrine of substantive due process?... Will the failures of Obamacare require a massive leap to a single-payer system to avert a return to some status quo ante that is morally and socially intolerable? It’s clear that we need to kill Obamacare and avoid a single-payer system at all costs....
The [ObamaCare] applicant pool... clearly attracts individuals with known healthcare conditions who will receive extensive public subsidies.... Healthy young persons... stay away... until they become sick and can sign up with the plan of their choice, no questions asked. Obamacare can only remain solvent with an enormous public subsidy. But... to [Obama], taxpayer costs don’t matter....
The President’s adamant position in the face of an industry-wide insurance meltdown ought to force a serious reconsideration of the constitutional issues.... National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius... [dealt with] issues of Congressional power, not of individual rights....
The extraordinary claims for government domination over individual rights comes front and center when the President announces that he will... [force] ordinary folks... [to] acquir[e]... coverage... they don’t want... maternity care for men as an essential minimum benefit.... It is sickening when a president tells people... that they must navigate his government websites or go without [insurance]. If “the right to healthcare” is fundamental, Obamacare violates it. Delay here is no option.... Striking it down is an act of mercy for the American people....
The real question is whether the Democrats in Congress will come to their senses and realize that Obamacare is DOA.... Mid-level fixes... none has a prayer of success so long as this president remains in office. Deregulation and tax cuts are dirty words to Obama, but they are the only source of relief to a nation. The ACA has already done enough harm. The time to start over is now.