15 Nov 2013

Krugtron Confers His Invincibility to ObamaCare

Health Legislation, Krugman 12 Comments

Remember when healthcare.gov first launched, back on October 1, that Krugman wrote:

So, very early reports are that Obamacare exchanges are, as expected, having some technical glitches on the first day — maybe even a bit worse than expected, because it appears that volume has been much bigger than predicted.

Here’s what you need to know: this is good, not bad, news for the program….

The big fear has been that a combination of ignorance and misinformation would keep people away, that they wouldn’t sign up…Lots of people logging on and signing up on the very first day…is an early indication that it’s going to be fine, that plenty of people will sign up for the first year of health reform.

Yes, there may be some negative news stories about the glitches. But Obamacare is not up for a revote. As Jonathan Bernstein says, the only thing that matters is whether it works. And today’s heavy volume is yet another sign — along with abating health costs and below-expected premiums — that it will.

So you would think that in light of the actual reality–according to CNN, 106,000 Americans signed up for ObamaCare in the first month–Krugman would be sweating bullets.

Ha ha, I crack myself up. Here’s what Krugman wrote on October 29:

Suppose that healthcare.gov isn’t fixed by the end of next month. How bad is it for Obamacare? Would the program be doomed?

No, says Jonathan Cohn, because there are two layers of protection against poor signup…. First, there is a system of cross-subsidies to insurance companies…Second, the subsidies to individuals are designed to hold health costs down to 8 percent of income, which means that they will rise if costs are higher than expected.

Neither of these would be a good thing, since they would increase the budget cost, but they do mean that Obamacare’s survival probably isn’t on the line.

Actually, the biggest reason Obama and co. should be anxious to fix these things now, I’d argue, isn’t the fate of the program itself, which can survive even large early wobbles, but the midterm elections. If Obamacare is fixed, Republicans will be in the position of attacking a program that is benefiting millions of Americans; if it isn’t, they can still run against the legend, not the fact.

So a lot is riding on fixing the technological botch — but not in quite the way people imagine.

And remember, by “in quite the way people imagine,” Krugman was referring to himself precisely 28 days earlier, when he thought the enrollment numbers tilted in favor of his preferred policy.

You really have to sympathize with poor Krugman. Can you imagine how annoying it must be for him, to deal with “austerian” economists who refuse to admit they’re wrong in light of the evidence? They just keep pushing their preferred policy, inventing contradictory rationales as the facts on the ground undercut them. Man I don’t know how he summons the will to return to the policy debate each day, with opponents who behave like that.

12 Responses to “Krugtron Confers His Invincibility to ObamaCare”

  1. Gamble says:

    Bob I understand your Krugman gotcha moment but I Wan to point another error in this.

    “Second, the subsidies to individuals are designed to hold health costs down to 8 percent of income, which means that they will rise if costs are higher than expected.”

    If individual pays 8% of income and guv offsets the rest, that means healthcare cost are more than 8%.
    Do these people really think guv spending is magic fairy dust? That amount above 8% is funded via weakened purchasing power, ultimately the same people paying the 8% pay any extra amount plus the amount bureaucrats pilfer during the long trip to DC. and back. This guy needs to contact his college and demand an immediate refund.

  2. RPLong says:

    This is why I think it’s important for people engaged in a debate to define – nice and early – what success and failure look like, so that everyone can agree on what it is they’re seeing as the events unfold.

    • Gamble says:

      They have this thing called profit, choice and competition but it seems to be out of favor.

  3. Nobel phonies says:

    For Paul Krugman to taken seriously he would have to rise a hundredfold to the level of first-class idiot. He is merely a useful idiot at this point.

  4. Major_Freedom says:

    Murphy you have an incredible talent for remembering past arguments. Did you always have a good memory or was it something you purposefully made an effort to improve?

    • Bob Murphy says:

      Murphy you have an incredible talent for remembering past arguments. Did you always have a good memory or was it something you purposefully made an effort to improve?

      I can’t recall.

  5. JohnB says:

    I just tried creating an account for fun and it didn’t work the first time because it doesn’t have a way of telling you whether the username and password you’ve chosen is already in use. What a joke. Every other website in the world can do this. Even videogames tell you right away whether your username is taken or not. Unbelievable.

    • Matt M (Dude Where's My Freedom) says:

      Why do you have to “create an account” anyway? It’s a government system. Presumably, they already have all your information on file.

      Say what you will about the inefficiencies of the military, but most military websites I used never required me to create an account. You can log in to purchase Navy uniforms with your name, SSN, and date of birth, all things they already have on file.

  6. @ZeevKidron says:

    I have commented in this blog before that everyone is ignoring, for now, the most important question about the ACA. Krugman here is beginning to make the argument along my line of comment.

    If there is language in this Law that can be interpreted as baseline budgeting, auto pilot budgeting or any other fancy term that will allow the government to simply pour more money on the pile then Krugman is right. It doesn’t matter what happens. The government will keep pouring money for the remaining 3 years of Obama’s term and by then enough people will be enrolled and subsidies will be so high and wide spread that even if Murphy himself is elected President in 2016 he won’t risk the public’s outcry (and pitchforks) to cancel it.

    If some “fixes” and “tweaks” are required, they will “tweak and fix” and if those cost more money then so be it.

    It doesn’t matter unless you’re one of the losers under this Law. But ask yourself who loses from this Law and think a bit who they vote for, or if they vote at all. I will bet the farm that this calculus was done when passing the Law. And it came out good for the people who passed it.

    It’s the greatest political gamble in history. We’ll see how it works out.

  7. Rick Hull says:

    > If Obamacare is fixed, Republicans will be in the position of attacking a program that is benefiting millions of Americans; if it isn’t, they can still run against the legend, not the fact.

    HAHAHA, what?

    So, if Obamacare isn’t fixed, then the Teathuglicans can still run against the legend? Not the fact of it being broken? We had to pass the legend to find out the facts within.

    Krugtron needs a new logic board.

  8. Yancey Ward says:

    The cross subsidies can’t protect the insurers from losses if they are all losing money, it can only minimize them. Finally, Cohn is only right about the subsidies until 2017- at that point the rate at which the subsidies rise is capped to the same rate as Medicare increases. You can choose to believe that Congress won’t allow that cap to hold if the premiums are rising faster than that, but then proponents of the ACA have been telling us for years now that they are bending the cost curve.

Leave a Reply to Rick Hull

Cancel Reply