Time Horizons: Health Care Smackdown

FLG keeps telling you (maybe he's boring the shit out of you on this topic but it's his fucking blog and he'll cry if he wants to, cry if he wants to...) that if you read with an eye toward time horizons everything becomes much, much clearer.

Anyway, Avik Roy takes on Matt Steinglass, whose time horizon is all of about five seconds and whose analysis is consequently dreadful:

very few observers on either the Right or the Left would agree with Steinglass' outlandish assertion that Obamacare "is an entirely private-insurer, free-market-based reform." Ezra Klein and other liberals describe the law as a "huge progressive victory" precisely because it moves us further away from a free market for health care (not that we had much of one to begin with).

Why do they say this? Because in the long run scheme of things, this is a big shift toward government control and it sets the stage for more of the same.

Avik continues:

And then to "death panels." This has indeed been a sore spot on the Left. I can understand why; most liberals sincerely believe that their policies will make the world a better place (and that their opponents seek the opposite). Hence, to them, it is preposterous that they are seeking to kill Granny by instituting an Independent Payment Advisory Board and/or end-of-life counseling.

On this question, the controversy is not about facts, but about predictions.