Advocates of government-run health care routinely accuse those who disagree with them of “defending the status quo.” Ramesh Ponnuru exposes the irony of that charge in Time:
Most Americans of working age get their health insurance through their employers. The Democrats running for President want to keep it that way. The Republicans don’t … They want to make a break with more than six decades of government policy.
In other words, it is the alleged progressives who wish to maintain the status quo while the so-called conservatives promote a radical break from the past. As Arnold Kling puts it:
Real radicals in health care reform are not to be found on the Left … It is those of us who are willing to pull the government rug out from under the existing system who are the radicals.
And, as if to prove Ponnuru and Kling right, Ezra Klein jumps in to defend the employer-based insurance system that has produced so much of what we dislike about our health care system:
Within an employer’s pool … You’re protected and subsidized by your colleagues. Which is important: What you want in health insurance is for it to be stable, safe, secure.
Our political taxonomy has become so Orwellian that “progressives” use words like “safe” and “secure,” while the “conservatives” talk about ditching a traditional system that has been in place for two generations.
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