Live from La Strada: There was a time when it seemed like Nick Gillespie was--unusually for those on the right--a relatively smart person, with respect for reality.
It looks as though those days are gone.
Jon Chait reports--and, as best as I can determine he reports the arguments of John Merline and Nick Gillespie fairly, and greatly to their discredit:
: Obamacare Haters Freaking Out Over New Report: "John Merline of Investor’s Business Daily and Nick Gillespie of Reason insist Obama’s promise to save money for people with employer insurance has failed...
...Why? Because the nominal cost of health insurance has gone up.... Merline and Gillespie... assume that Obama was using a baseline of existing nominal prices.... [In their view] the only way Obama’s reforms could succeed is not only if the decades of medical inflation slowed their rate, but if prices actually dropped in nominal terms. Of course, Obama never actually said anything like this. Merline does not even claim he did. Instead, he insists that it kinda ‘seems’ like Obama meant this.... Oh, it 'seems' that way, huh? That's your argument? The reason it makes sense to judge Obamacare against an alternative world in which decades of medical inflation drop to zero percent a year is that it 'seems' as if he made this insanely grandiose promise? So, yes, if you assume that Obama meant an implausibly unrealistic promise that he did not actually say, then his reforms have fallen short....
The determination of Obamacare haters to claim vindication is a testament to the power of the human spirit in the face of all factual evidence. Right-wingers have every right to ideologically oppose the concept of a government program that uses regulation, taxes, and spending to provide insurance to people who can't afford it. Their unwillingness to concede that this program is working on its own terms is delusional.
While everyone interested in reality-based health-care policy is marveling in astonishment at how much cheaper than expected ObamaCare has been to implement, Merline and Gillespie are off raving in the corner.
