Armed with the new Health Insurance Laws, the Rich Look Forward to Siphoning the Resources of the Non-Rich

Yes, the Hendrik Hertzberg article is snobbish, lame and irrelevant. It really is an embarrassment to journalists. It was published at a notorious redoubt of "old money": no one at "The New Yorker" really cares about lower income working (or unemployed) people.

Here are just a few clues (among dozens that exist) that the new health insurance laws are little more than a way for rich insurance executives, employees, and lobbyists to siphon the meager resources of poor people (which they are motivated to do given the largely collapsed economy):

--The net result is opposite in many respects to what Obama and the Democrats campaigned on.

--The Democrats failed to get one single Republican vote (unlike with Social Security, Medicare, etc.)

--Most of the new laws don't take effect until 2014 and the strong negative reactions to it won't happen until 2015-2017. 5-7 years is a very long time politically; this amount of time allows those who passed it to somewhat remove themselves from having to take responsibility for the failures. Some of those who passed the bad laws won't even be in office when the bills for it come due and when those negatively affected and those who thought they would benefit but who find out they don't benefit start crying the blues.

As I said these clues that the new laws are a sham and a racket for the insurance companies are just the tip of the iceberg, but even by themselves they tell you that there is something very, very wrong here.

There are some good aspects, like Medicaid expansion and a few new regulations on insurance that should have existed since the 1950's or so, but the law as a whole does more harm than good. Anyone who says the law does more good than harm does not understand macroeconomics or microeconomics (or does not think they are important). Both macro and micro economics tell you, after you study the laws and apply those disciplines, that the new laws will do more harm than good. Economics may not be perfect but what we are talking about are very basic, irrefutably important and long established as valid economics principles that are trashed by the new laws.

This whole episode is a textbook example of how way too many elite Americans are too greedy and too right wing to resist the temptation to trash the laws of economics in favor of laws that keep the rich rich and make the poor poorer. Europeans used to commonly have shortcomings like this: many decades or some centuries ago!

The above was in response to this article.