Please take notes

Steven Benen of Washington Monthly describes Obama's adroit 'educating' of Stephanopoulos over mandatory health insurance: individual mandates:

At that point, Stephanopoulos referenced Merriam Webster's, to try to nail down a precise definition of a "tax." The president responded, "George, the fact that you looked up Merriam's Dictionary, the definition of tax increase, indicates to me that you're stretching a little bit right now. Otherwise, you wouldn't have gone to the dictionary to check on the definition."

The host added, "But your critics say it is a tax increase."

Obama replied, "My critics say everything is a tax increase."

And here endeth the lesson.

Remember, this man has taught law students, students trying to weasel out of due dates, tests and papers. He knows how to recognize and deal with bullshitters....

Krugman simplifies the argument

So all of us can understand:

Health reform made simple

Kudos to the Times for a story that, for once, emphasizes the remarkable unity of vision health reformers are showing, rather than the squabbles that are an inevitable part of passing major legislation.

The essence is really quite simple: regulation of insurers, so that they can’t cherry-pick only the healthy, and subsidies, so that all Americans can afford insurance.

Everything else is about making that core work. Individual mandates are a way to prevent gaming of the system by people who don’t sign up until they’re sick; employer mandates a way to hold down the on-budget costs by preventing a rush by employers to drop insurance; the public option a way to create effective competition and hold costs down further.

But what it means for the individual will be that insurers can’t reject you, and if your income is relatively low, the government will help pay your premiums.

That’s it. Any commentator who whines that he just doesn’t understand it is basically saying that he doesn’t want to understand it.