Jonathan Chait answer Martin Feldstein

Martin Feldstein wrote an article called Obama's Plan Isn't the Answer in Washington Post and said this:


"Obama has said that he would favor a British-style “single payer” system in which the government owns the hospitals and the doctors are salaried but that he recognizes that such a shift would be too disruptive to the health-care industry."

Single-payer, as anyone who has paid the least bit of attention to the health care debate knows, means a system like Medicare, in which the government pays the bills. It absolutely does not mean a British-style system — and Obama definitely didn’t advocate anything of the sort."

Jonathan Chait then responded with this facts:

"Obama has never said that he favors a British-style health care system. Britain does not have a single-payer system. It has a socialized system, where the government directly employs all health care providers. Indeed, if you follow the link in Feldstein's own column, it says, "A single-payer system would eliminate private insurance companies and put a Medicare-like system into place where the government pays all health-care bills with tax dollars." Does Medicare own hospitals and pay doctors government salaries? No. Professor Feldstein, please stop writing about topics you know nothing about."

Paul Krugman agree and added:
"Single-payer, as anyone who has paid the least bit of attention to the health care debate knows, means a system like Medicare, in which the government pays the bills. It absolutely does not mean a British-style system — and Obama definitely didn’t advocate anything of the sort.

One possibility is that Feldstein really is that ignorant of the health-care basics; if so, he has no business writing an op-ed on the subject, just as he had no business writing an op-ed on climate change policy. (Yes, I write about subjects on which I’m not an expert — but I do my homework first.)

The alternative possibility is that Feldstein knew that he was saying something false, but did it anyway in the hope of scaring his readers."

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/irresponsible-punditry/

Interesting to see that Feldstein also desinformed about climate change:
"Since the U.S. share of global CO2 production is now less than 25 percent (and is projected to decline as China and other developing nations grow), a 15 percent fall in U.S. CO2 output would lower global CO2 output by less than 4 percent."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/27/AR2009072701905.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Krugmans comments:
"Um, in the absence of a cap-and-trade system, emissions would grow by quite a lot. So the right comparison is not with current emissions levels but with what they would have been in the absence of the policy — a much bigger number. That’s the sort of comparison economists always make — it’s definitely weird for Feldstein not to see this."
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/03/feldstein-on-global-warming/