The National Review's Cathy Seipp is shocked -- SHOCKED! -- that various blogospheric commenters (not bloggers, mind you, but commenters) are relatively uninformed about health policy:
But really, The Washington Monthly's is a policy blog, not some diary of a teenager's feelings, and health care is a pretty big policy issue. It's not unreasonable to expect commenters to be at least familiar with the basics before throwing in their two cents. (And contrary to what kindly teachers may have told you, there are indeed such things as stupid questions.)
Yeah. Stupid ol' commenters! And here's Florence King, a paid writer at Cathy's own magazine, The National Review, long recognized as one of the most respected and influential political journals on the right:
Rest assured that I am not going to write about insurance per se. That requires a natural ear for droning that I lack; a numbers cruncher's visceral need to drizzle “%” signs all over the page; and, of course, the technical knowledge to criticize HillaryCare and BushCare. I can't do that. As Samuel Johnson said of the plot of Cymbeline, “It is impossible to criticize unresisting imbecility.”
I leave “deductibles” and “co-payments” and all the rest of it to the panicky-eyed patients milling around the doctor's checkout desk while his shattered nurse waits on hold to find out who pays for the first three hemorrhoids.
Huh. I mean, I've always felt that Kevin Drum's blog was a more serious, respectable organ than The National Review, but I'd never dreamt that they would agree.