Matthew Continetti at National Review would have us believe that governmental programs are evaluated in a fair and objective manner in this piece on Senator Sanders’ (I-VT) recently proposed “Medicare For All” bill:
Recall what happened the last time Democrats tackled health care. The designers of the Affordable Care Act went out of their way to get buy-in from all the various players in the health-care system. They based their plan on Mitt Romney’s legacy in Massachusetts. Yet the controversy over Obamacare’s mandates, taxes, regulations, and panels cost the Democrats the House, and the negative reaction to the law’s implementation in 2013 and 2014 cost them the Senate. What would be the fallout if Democrats, reduced to their weakest position in years, took on not only the entirety of the health-care industry but also the status-quo bias of the American people?
This completely ignores the campaign of fright and doomsday run by the GOP and fringe-right organizations who could not permit the Democrats a victory in the healthcare debate, and even today would have us believe the ACA is on the brink of collapse, rather than the truth that, properly managed, most third party experts seem to believe that it’ll be both stable and effective.
This omission may be a convenient way to make his piece stronger, but failing to consider all the facts often has, let’s say, karmic consequences. Let’s suppose the impossible occurs and some version of Sanders’ bill becomes law, and a decade later it’s stable and popular. How does that accrue to Continetti’s reputation?
