Master Yoda Has Taught You Well

Is this Ross Douthat's license plate?

I've spent the last few years avoiding David Brooks' columns in the Times, because my reaction always seems to run along the same grooves.

"Hmm, that's an interesting point, grounded in the essential, attitudinal conservatism as typified by Brooks' hero, Edmund Burke."

"Wait.  What was that?"

"Are you kidding me?  You start there and wind up here?"

To create an example, Brooks might say, "Everyone loves puppies as symbols of frolicsome innocence." And you would say, "Why, yes, I do love puppies."

Then Brooks would write, "But puppies have sharp teeth and tend to chew things."  And you say, "This is why we train puppies, David.  So they don't chew things.  It part of being a pet owner.  Where are you going with this?"

And then he concludes with, "And this is why we can't fund health care reform because it might end up chewing the furniture."  And you sit there, your jaw agape, and wonder what happened to the New York Times.  You wonder about the death of metaphor and the fact that while Brooks is ambivalent about torturing terror suspects ("Burke would not approve.  Maybe."), he is not above torturing the English language and logic itself.

People have taken to calling Ross Douthat "Chunky Bobo" in honor of his being the "other" conservative on the Times Op-Ed page (I guess Friedman doesn't count.).

Today's column is right in the tradition of Brooksian logic twisting.

He begins with a good enough point: Republicans could try and destroy the ACA reform by attacking those parts that are unpopular, like the revenue streams and the mandate.  But if they do so, ACA goes from being deficit neutral to a deficit buster.

Now, let's pause for a moment and reflect on this Brooksian masterpiece.  First, is the assumption that "conservative" as defined today, has anything to do with the "conservatism" of, say, Hoover or Grover Cleveland.  As they demonstrated in December, the "conservatives" of the GOP don't care a fart in a hurricane about the deficit.  They want to cut budgets and give tax breaks to millionaires.  That is literally their entire reason for being.

But, OK, the current Cantor approach of making HCR appear ugly by making it ugly is not good "conservatism".  I think it's a silly point, but I'll grant it, Ross, if only to move this along.

He then does his first Brooksian pivot.  He identifies three "conservative" critiques of HCR.  It doesn't force people to deal with their actual HC costs, it might force employers to stop offering HC because there is now an individual pool and the usual claptrap about the death of liberty.

The first problem is kind of the point of insurance, isn't it?  I kind of sort of fell off the roof yesterday breaking up ice dams.  I decided my swelling thumb and ever so slight concussion (if it was one) were not worth the time to sit in the ER.  But that was MY decision, not a decision made because I couldn't afford to go to the ER.  The previous Saturday I went and sat three hours in a walk-in clinic because I had an ear infection, and I was not going to wait until Monday to get antibiotics.

What I didn't have to do was decide whether to go to the clinic/ER based on my ability to pay for that AND my kids' sneakers/food/winter clothing.  This returns to the fallacy that HC costs are like any other costs.  "Hey, I can get another 50,000 miles out of my car" is not the same as "Hey, I can get another 5 years out of my kidneys."

Second is another pseudo-economic argument that is again based on a cost-benefit analysis model unfamiliar to people in the real world.  Employers offer health insurance - if they do - because the competition does, too.  This is why Denny's doesn't offer insurance, because Arby's doesn't either.  Insurance is part of an employee inducement package.  It is part of the compensation that induces a worker to stay with whatever company.  If a company says, "Screw you, buy your own insurance through the exchanges." They will have to pony up money to help cover that.  And it will likely be more expensive than negotiating a group plan.  Not to mention, people won't want to work for that company.

The third argument is just stupid.

So, the first pivot is full of things that sound plausible, but are really nonsense.  Brooks would be proud.

He then gets to his prescriptive part where he leaves you thinking, "What?  Why did I read this?"

His first solution: deregulation!  Why?  Because f*** you, deregulation is the answer to everything!!! Did you not pay attention to the booming economy of the Bush years?

He then proposes tinkering around with the mandate, in ways that Ezra Klein already examined more intelligently and pretty much dismissed.  Klein also linked to a bunch of HC experts who also said that Douthat's "solution" is pretty weak tea.

At the end, you're left thinking, "This numbnuts has no idea what the purpose of insurance is.  He doesn't understand that the point is to spread the risk so that when you fall off the roof, you're covered.  When you suddenly up and get cancer, you're covered.  He thinks buying insurance is like buying socks."

And then you read this.  And you see Douthat say that, "Screw reform, we're all going to die anyway."  And you realize the sociopathy that lies in the gentle, Burkean heart of "conservatives" like Brooks and Douthat.