Yes, Republicans DO Think Americans Are Stupid

Paul Krugman


Revenge of the Three-Legged Stool

Another day, another Romney whopper. Now he says that he’ll keep the good parts of Obamacare, in particular coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, while scrapping the rest.



You can’t do that – and Romney knows very well that you can’t do that, because the logic that went into Romneycare in Massachusetts is the same as the logic behind Obamacare.



Suppose you want to guarantee that insurance is available to people with pre-existing conditions. Well, you can establish community rating, requiring that insurance companies make the same policies available to everyone. But if you stop there, you know what will happen: healthy people will opt out, leaving behind a high-risk, high-cost pool.



So you have to also have a mandate, requiring that people buy insurance. And you can’t do that without subsidies, so that lower-income people can afford their policies.



The inexorable logic of the situation, then, leads to a three-legged stool of community rating + mandate + subsidies = ObamaRomneycare.



So, does Romney think we’re stupid? Hey, he also thinks we’ll buy into his promises to slash taxes by $5 trillion but make up the revenue by closing unspecified loopholes in a way that doesn’t raise taxes on the middle class – which turns out to be arithmetically impossible. So the answer is, yes, he thinks we’re stupid.



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