WaPo article totally undermines Marcus op ed's swipes at Dems on Bush tax plan

[BurtWorm]

Ruth Marcus wrote an incredibly stupid op-ed piece for yesterday's post:

The Knee-Jerk Opposition

By Ruth Marcus
Wednesday, January 24, 2007; Page A23

If George W. Bush proposes something, it must be bad. Such is the knee-jerk state of partisan suspiciousness that when the president actually endorses a tax increase -- a tax increase that would primarily hit the well-off, no less -- Democrats still howl.

Such is the level of distrust that when the president finally disavows the free lunch and comes up with a program not financed with deficit spending -- indeed, one that would actually bring in extra revenue as the years go on -- Democrats still howl.

Listening to Democratic reaction to Bush's new health insurance proposal, you get the sense that if Bush picked a plank right out of the Democratic platform -- if he introduced Hillarycare itself -- and stuck it in his State of the Union address, Democrats would churn out press releases denouncing it....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/23/AR2007012301564.html





To which the Post itself replies today:



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/24/AR2007012401956.html?nav=rss_politics

Experts Examine Bush Health Plan
Some Fear That Consumers Wouldn't Fare Well in Open Market

By Christopher Lee and Lori Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, January 25, 2007; Page A10

Economists are still sorting out the implications of the broad health-care proposals President Bush unveiled this week, but already some clear winners and losers are emerging.

Families with generous employer-sponsored coverage would be worse off, while those who buy insurance on the individual market, or whose health plan costs less than $15,000 annually, would come out ahead. But some of the winners will probably become losers over time, analysts said.


...


Moreover, while Bush's plan would alter a historic imbalance in the tax code that favors generally better-off consumers who get insurance through their jobs, it also could undermine coverage for some sicker, older people and erode the employer-sponsored system that still provides coverage to more than half of all Americans.

Some experts questioned whether the plan would have any impact on holding down spiraling health costs or extending health coverage to some of the 47 million people in the nation who have none.

"It's not solving the uninsured problem and it's not solving the cost problem, so it's not really advancing what we need to have happen," said Karen Davis, president of the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit health policy research organization. "What it does is favor individual insurance. . . . The question is, should you try to undermine employer coverage? Employer coverage has lower administrative costs and it covers everybody in a firm, not just those who are healthy enough to pass a medical exam."

...

[BurtWorm]

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