Basic Facts: They're Important

Jonathan Chait
TNR

Last night I noted, with regard to Jonah Goldberg's erroneous beliefs that the stimulus did not include tax cuts and that liberals did not complain about its size at the time of its passage, that it's very frustrating to debate public policy with people who are unaware of the basic facts. The problem seems to be especially acute on health care, an issue conservatives have just never paid much attention to. Thus an enormous swath of right-wing commentary is based on simple factual misunderstandings. In today's Washington Post, Martin Feldstein spews out a lot of GOP talking points on health care, capped off by this gem:

Obama has said that he would favor a British-style "single payer" system in which the government owns the hospitals and the doctors are salaried but that he recognizes that such a shift would be too disruptive to the health-care industry.

Obama has never said that he favors a British-style health care system. Britain does not have a single-payer system. It has a socialized system, where the government directly employs all health care providers. Indeed, if you follow the link in Feldstein's own column, it says, "A single-payer system would eliminate private insurance companies and put a Medicare-like system into place where the government pays all health-care bills with tax dollars." Does Medicare own hospitals and pay doctors government salaries? No. Professor Feldstein, please stop writing about topics you know nothing about.

(Continued here.)