The American Spectator

Print Email

Text Size

The Spectacle Blog

Megan McArdle has a post explaining how one the one hand it is right for Phil Klein to report that the CBO analysis of the Senate bill indicates that certain premiums will rise and on the other Krugman can claim that it says the exact opposite.

It's a confusing topic, and there are real judgment calls to be made regarding whether premiums would go up or down.

But Krugman presented a graph created by MIT economist Jonathan Gruber using data from a different CBO score as if it corresponded to the most recent CBO score. He did so in order to deride Republicans, in a way that is terribly misleading.

McArdle:

The only thing I can say with real confidence is that Paul Krugman's interpretation of the whole affair is very odd:

"But here's the thing: senior Republican politicians suffer from reading comprehension. (To be fair, the CBO report is written in a remarkably elliptical style). Several have already claimed that the report shows that premiums will rise.

And they probably won't get called on it."

Republican politicians are saying this because this is, in fact, what the CBO report says:  average premiums will be higher.