Semi-Daily Journal Archive

The Blogspot archive of the weblog of J. Bradford DeLong, Professor of Economics and Chair of the PEIS major at U.C. Berkeley, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury.

Thursday, April 27, 2006

Stupidest Woman Alive...

Florence King of, yes, National Review makes her play for the Stupidest Woman Alive. Ezra Klein read it by accident, and now needs professional help:

Ezra Klein: Hoo Boy: This is the sort of high quality political commentary you can only find in The National Review:

Rest assured that I am not going to write about insurance per se. That requires a natural ear for droning that I lack; a numbers cruncher's visceral need to drizzle % signs all over the page; and, of course, the technical knowledge to criticize HillaryCare and BushCare. I can't do that. As Samuel Johnson said of the plot of Cymbeline, "It is impossible to criticize unresisting imbecility."

I leave "deductibles" and "co-payments" and all the rest of it to the panicky-eyed patients milling around the doctor's checkout desk while his shattered nurse waits on hold to find out who pays for the first three hemorrhoids.

I love the pride folks take in their ignorance, particularly when they're puffing out their chest because they can't evaluate the policy they've chosen to write about. It's like a disclaimer: "Everything I'm about to say is ill-considered and uninformed. Don't listen."

But more than not listening, I shouldn't have read. What follows is honestly -- and I rarely use this word, but I simply can't think of another -- moronic. It's one part cultural analysis of the concept of insurance, one part bizarre moral hazard argument. It argues that insurance created the hypochondriac. It argues that the fundamental reason folks rush to the doctor -- I shit you not -- is they hate to "waste" their insurance. That's right, I go and spend hours in waiting rooms because I got an insurance card burning a hole in my pocket, baby.

I just don't know what to say.

I know what Ezra should say. Here's what he should say: "Congratulations, Ms. King. You are now the front runner in the Stupidest Woman Alive contest. Oh, and anybody listening who has written for National Review wants to be taken for anything other than a moronic hack? Run, as far and as fast as you can, away from the operation. And change your name too."

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