Now that Al Franken has been seated in the Senate, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is now telling reporters he sees no need for the left to compromise on their demands for a government-run “public option” health care plan. Proponents of the public plan, like Schumer, believe government-run health care is needed “to keep the insurance companies honest,” because they believe private insurance companies have higher administrative costs than a government-run health care system would. The explanations for why liberals believe this are as numerous as they are erroneous: government is …
In his blog, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman launches an unsubstantiated attack on The Heritage Foundation for our June 25 report showing that Medicare administrative costs are higher than those private health plans, not lower, as Krugman has frequently claimed. We find it somewhat encouraging that his only “refutation” to our basic point consists of (a) an ad-hominem-like attack, and (b) an old quote that is doesn’t refute the point of our report — and is incorrect anyway. The point of our paper is that expressing health administrative costs …
