Good Discussion

There is a good discussion about this column (hidden behind the NYT pay wall - and therefore unlikely to be widely read) going on over at Michael Van Der Galien's blog.

He then makes the basic mistake quite some progressives make every now and then:

The truth is that there’s no difference in principle between saying that every American child is entitled to an education and saying that every American child is entitled to adequate health care. It’s just a matter of historical accident that we think of access to free K-12 education as a basic right, but consider having the government pay children’s medical bills “welfare,“ with all the negative connotations that go with that term.

See - it is all an “historical accident.” Therefore, we should think the same about health care as we do about education. Screw counterarguments.
And then he makes it even worse by lashing out to conservatives: “And conservative opposition to giving every child in this country access to health care is, in a fundamental sense, un-American.”

Umh, what? Where in the Constitution does it say that every one has the right to health care? Besides, I bet you most people think that everyone should have access to affordable health care, but that is not the same as making it the responsibility of the federal government to provide it. Certain conservatives may, for instance, think that it is unconstitutional to get the government (too much) involved or they may think that private companies can deal with the problem… or (shocker to people like Krugman who seem to believe that States in the US are not much different that provinces in the Netherlands) that States could and should deal with it.

Soylent Green makes an appearance. That should be enough to pique your interest.