GOP's Health Reform 'Analysis' Is Assault on Logic

In their effort to repeal health care reform, the GOP has produced “some numbers and charts to wave at the press”—but they’re not part of any “rational discussion,” writes Paul Krugman in the New York Times. Their figures are, in fact, part of the GOP's "war on logic." They blame health reform, for example, for costs that would exist anyway and dismiss the nonpartisan CBO's figures—which show that a repeal will boost the deficit—as mere "opinion."

The GOP argues that the office is “double-counting” figures, which Krugman complains “doesn’t make any sense.” The fact is, Republicans don’t actually think health care will raise the deficit or kill jobs: Their concern is that “it would cover the uninsured," and as they see it, lightening the burden of the poor using tax dollars “is immoral.” So, Krugman concludes, all the GOP "ever wanted were some numbers and charts to wave at the press, fooling some people into believing that we’re having some kind of rational discussion. We aren’t."
(More Congressional Budget Office stories.)