Friday, November 6, 2009

Poor examples

Ezra Klein destroys Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich ...

Well, Texas currently leads the nation in the rate of uninsured, with more than 25 percent of the state's residents lacking health-care coverage. If you limit the analysis to residents under age 65, which takes seniors covered by the national Medicare program out of the data, 28 percent of Texans are uninsured.

It would be interesting to hear Gov. Perry explain why this is, but this teensy little fact doesn't appear anywhere in his op-ed. Presumably, that's because there is no good explanation: Texas, despite its much-touted $9 billion rainy-day fund, simply has not made it a priority to fix its health-care system, and so it has deteriorated into the worst in the nation.

Letting Perry serve as the spokesman for a federalist solution to the health-care system is a bit like letting Dick Fuld testify on the adequacy of self-regulation on Wall Street, or Donald Rumsfeld explain that occupations are easy.