by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math
As a charter member of Unofficial Edwards Central, I know you're all shocked that I think Edwards position on the Man Date question is the best of the Big Three. The truth is, both Clinton and Obama make serious points about each others' plans. The Obama plan technically does not provide insurance to every American. But in the end state, we will either end up with universal coverage, or our political overlords will discover tha adverse selection is allowing healthy yuppies to avoid buying insurance, and force them in with a mandate. But mandates are, as Obama points out, very hard to enforce. On top of that, it's a somewhat tough problem to figure out just who exactly is uninsured, which makes it difficult to just mail out Basic Health Plan insurance cards to the 47 million Americans.
In a perfect world I would much rather just pay for the basic plan out of the general fund, rather than send people an extra bill or force them to provide proof of insurance when they fill out their taxes. You could even provide insurance companies a per-head reimbursement equivalent to basic plan, just to even the playing field. But if that's not on the table, and the government's going to be in the business of ensuring that every American has insurance [as it should], it's really the government's duty to make it as simple as possible for people to enroll. And using your existing interactions with the government—which everyone but a few tax-protesting survivalists has—is a fine approach. It's as close as you can get to "Just Sign People Up" position as we can get without getting every Beltway reporter to scream "gotcha!" every time a candidate says they're going to fund some public service by raising taxes.
—Signed, not Ezra Klein
