Such as the Econopundit site -

… until he knows everything about nothing

http://www.econopundit.com/archive/2004_07_01_econopundit_archive.html#108938715016003614

Professor Krugman, isolated academic that he is, ignores the law of unanticipated consequences owing to his lack of sophisticated knowledge of real-world employers and employees:

John Kerry has proposed an ambitious health care plan that would extend coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans, while reducing premiums for the insured. To pay for that plan, Mr. Kerry wants to rescind recent tax cuts for the roughly 3 percent of the population with incomes above $200,000…

First, the Kerry plan raises the maximum incomes under which both children and parents are eligible to receive benefits from Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. This would extend coverage to many working-class families, who often fall into a painful gap: they earn too much money to qualify for government help, but not enough to pay for health insurance. As a result, the Kerry plan would probably end a national scandal, the large number of uninsured American children.

Second, the Kerry plan would provide “reinsurance” for private health plans, picking up 75 percent of the medical bills exceeding $50,000 a year. Although catastrophic medical expenses strike only a tiny fraction of Americans each year, they account for a sizeable fraction of health care costs…

The Kerry campaign contends that it can pay for its health care plan by rolling back only the cuts for taxpayers with incomes above $200,000. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, which has become the best source for tax analysis now that the Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Policy has become a propaganda agency, more or less agrees: it estimates the revenue gain from the Kerry tax plan at $631 billion over the next decade.

Here are a few interesting facts gleaned from the Tax Policy Center Professor Krugman refers us to.

(1) The tiny 3% of the population Krugman says will finance the Kerry plan (thru higher taxes) already provides about 33% of all federal revenue.

(2) As I read the footnotes explaining the Tax Policy Center’s method of calculating “pretax household cash income,” the Kerry/Krugman $200,000 income threshold captures the gross income of virtually every small business in the US — all the way from high tech startups to the grubby two-employee owner-run hot dog stands where they grab their lunch.

Now consider this. There are currently hundreds of thousands of struggling small businesses whose health insurance bill constitutes the simple difference between profit and loss. Doesn’t Krugman worry they will dump their plans in anticipation of newly-minted government programs designed just for workers like theirs?

The law of unanticipated consequences suggests the very announcement of the Kerry/Krugman plan — indeed, the very appearance of today’s NYT Krugman editorial — may result in fewer low income families with health insurance.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:13 AM