Thursday, November 1, 2007

The Conscience of a Liberal

Paul Krugman
W. W. Norton & Co. Ltd.
ISBN: 13-978-0-393-06069-0


Deriving it's title from the 1960 classic ghostwritten for Barry Goldwater, this book blasts what Krugman calls "movement conservatism" for being anti democratic, elitist, self serving, untenable, false, misleading and packed with lies. He goes on for several chapters in this vein before he gets down to his own proposal for a liberal, a progressive, agenda which is centered around universal, single payer, health care.

Krugman gives some simple, easily verified, easily understood numbers which show, in his opinion, that a single payer system would provide better health care to more people for less money than the nightmare system of health care by accountants that we have today. Simple put, he proposes to extend Medicare to everyone. Of course the insurance industry and the pharmas will fight tooth and nail to prevent this happening and doctors are always complaining about the level of payment from Medicare. I always feel sorry for my doctor whenever I see him pull out of the driveway of his McMansion in his Mercedes. I know he really wants a Bentley and who can blame him.






I never did figure out why Krugman's conscience is bothering him, though.

3 comments:

  1. This sounds like a good read, I will look for it for sure, I actually just posted on this topic on my new blog Social Views.Thanks for the review, I am always on the look out for good information.
    And good on you for supporting the often forgotten libraians of this world!

    ReplyDelete
  2. It might be interesting. I am getting more and more jaundiced about liberal and conservative writing. Hopefully we'll get a few more pragmatists in office...

    ReplyDelete

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