I’m just wondering whether, if, five years ago, the discussion of health care finance reform had included the sort of thing I was whining about, the discussion now would be at all different. Specifically, I was hoping to hear people say that under the proposed plan nobody will ever again be trapped in a lousy job because their children’s insurance is being held hostage. I felt, at the time, that a large amount of such talk, widely distributed, would go some way to making the proposed reforms more popular. Or, at least, making reform more popular, and making the proposed reforms relatively more popular by reminding people of what they dislike about employer-based health care.
At any rate, as you may have heard, the Congressional Budget Office included in a recent projection that the workforce would be reduced by some two millions—well, increased by less than would otherwise have been suggested by the equivalent of two millions, taken both in fewer workers and reduced hours by some workers—and that of course was taken as a disaster by the Other Party and their supporters. Left Blogovia scrambled to explain why this was perfectly all right—Greg Sargent and Jonathan Cohn and of course Paul Krugman, among many, many others. But why the scramble? If they had only listened to me… I mean, if the conversation leaders of My Party had been saying all along that the ACA (or whatever we were calling it at the time) would mean that people could quit lousy jobs and go back to school or start a business, then the idea that people would be quitting lousy jobs (or working fewer hours) and going back to school or starting businesses (or staying home with young children or grandchildren) would be a natural part of the whole thing.
Not, of course, that the spokesfolks for the Other Party would have then refrained from claiming that two million jobs had been killed killed killed, but perhaps we would have saved ourselves a day or two of reporters and analysts buying it. Which was moderately irritating, even if of course there aren’t going to be lasting consequences of a week’s bad press.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.