It occurs to me that just about every time the GOP actually carries out some of their favored policies, Andrew Sullivan turns violently on them. So he loathes -- rightfully -- their hateful social rhetoric. He's grown suitably contemptuous of their foreign policy (and he quotes Jim Henley to great effect on Giuliani's inchoate, maddening foriegn policy manifesto). But then he goes on to laud the everything they've not been able to do. "[Giuliani's] inclusive and largely right about healthcare policy. I like his low tax emphasis."
I wonder how Sullivan would really feel in a world where the tax incentives were set-up to incentivize sparse health care coverage and high deductibles. That's a land that's very good for the healthy, and quite bad for the chronically sick. Sullivan increasingly strikes me as a first order idealist who ably sees the principles behind things (freedom! choice! equality!) and is stunned when policies based on those concepts don't appear to work.
But here's why they don't work. Take Giuliani's health care plan, which basically rests of tax exemptions to help purchase care. It sets a standard deduction of $7,500 for individuals and $15,000 for families. Everyone will get precisely those deductions no matter what they spend. If you're 23 and your health care costs $2,000 a year, you still deduct $7,500, pocketing the difference. And that's the actual point of the plan. That's the incentive the plan is hoping will change health care -- it will incentivize everyone to buy less of it, and pocket more of their exemption.
