Reihan Salam, writing about the conservative quest to unravel the Great Society, makes this observation:
As Steven Teles has argued, in Conservatism and American Political Development and elsewhere, opponents of the expansion of the welfare state have had an impact on the shape and structure that the welfare state happens to have taken. The peculiar compound structure of PPACA, for example, reflects the imprint not so much of conservative ideas as such (the claim advanced by many of our interlocutors), but rather an effort to inoculate health-system reform against the most potent conservative and centrist criticisms.
So what’s the difference? Liberals give up their dream of a single payer health care system in exchange for one designed by Republicans to ensure universal coverage while preserving the private insurance market, but it doesn’t count because they don’t really mean it?
