According to the New Republic, if Michael Cannon* doesn’t like your face he’ll cut you.
Why did so many states that fiercely guard their prerogative to handle their own affairs cede control of their health insurance markets to Washington?
Well, a disproportionate share of the credit or blame—depending on how you’re looking at it—goes to a person you’ve probably never heard of: Michael Cannon.
Cannon is a health care policy expert at the libertarian Cato Institute. He is engaging and sharp-witted. He is also an avowed opponent of the Affordable Care Act, and has for several years now been embarked on a legal crusade that, while a ways from triumphing, may have inadvertently played an outsized role in suppressing the number of states setting up their own exchanges, thereby greatly confounding the law’s implementation.
Michael Cannon is also kind of bemused by the attention:
Says here I’m “engaging and sharp-witted.” Also, “a person you’ve probably never heard of.” http://t.co/sxQd8OrINw
— Michael F. Cannon (@mfcannon) November 13, 2013
Seriously. They’re kind of reaching at this point, huh?
Moe Lane
*I’d call him “Mike,” except that if I did that without permission he’d probably nuke my town.
Well it is a good thing no one knows which town you live in.
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*coughsomewherecoughincoughMarylandcough*
Maryland’s small enough to carpet-nuke.
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That said, if they’re just a hair off, we’ll get to see Fallout 3 IRL.
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Mew
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(pictures Harry Reid as a supermutant .. yeah, it kinda works)
Wow. I read the TNR piece and .. Wow. So much wrong there… So much they “know” that just ain’t so…
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Mew
You mean this Cannon fellow single-handedly destroyed the program by obeying the law?
The bastard!
Giving credit to anyone for ‘confounding’ Obamacare is like giving credit to a rooster for the Sun coming up. It was doomed to be confounded from its very origin.
So the “Republican Sabotage” meme is still going strong?
Call me stupid, but it looks to me like the article has a fundamental oversight.
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That being, they apparently failed to put themselves in the shoes of the decision makers, and game out the political risks.
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For persons at the state level to implement a state exchange, they must think that it will be successful, and that they won’t be punished for it. In other words, what ROI will they see on spending political capital?
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To assume that it would be, excepting Cannon, so conclusively a good return seems to require the assumption that not only will the PPACA be successful, it will be so successful as to turn many of its detractors into adherents.
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It is not clear that even heavily Democratic states must share that conclusion.
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Certainly, it seems reasonable that persons in heavily Republican states might expect to be punished for putting their political capital into such projects. Frankly, given the degree of opposition, it seems possible that not only would they be punished for lifting a finger to help, but that they might be punished for failing to fight as hard as they can.
If you’ll recall, that was the zeitgeist at the time… in the Age of Obama, all liberal things would finally work as planned.
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Worth noting again that the article was riddled with factual errors and assertions lacking in any evidence.
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Mew