Let's find out what this guy David Brooks smokes and buy a case.
Applauding (well, tolerating, more like: "This time the change is evolutionary, not revolutionary") the latest Clinton health care proposal the other day in his New York Times column, Brooks managed somehow to imagine this sentence:
"The private insurance/employer-based system will still remain the heart and soul of the social contract — it's just that more people will be given tax credits so they can afford to buy in."
Say what? Private insurance, yeah maybe, but employer-based? Social contract? Is that some kind of joke? I know people who work - sometimes two, sometimes even three jobs - and don't have health insurance, employer-based or otherwise. Speaking of which, if this fabulous Brooksian health insurance is so employer-based, why do people need tax credits to buy in?
Oh well. Maybe it's all for the best. Let people in to this employer-based social contract (social freakin' contract?) and they'll just screw things up anyway, Brooks seems to think, by becoming patients. And he knows what that means: "If the cost of an M.R.I. comes down, people will just want more of them." That's right, Bunky. A run on M.R.I.s. ("Americans spend more on computers as those machines get more efficient," he throws in for free, whether that has anything to do with M.R.I.s or not.) Doom is us.
Come to think of it, maybe two cases would be nice.
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