Death to O'Hanlon

Via Matt Yglesias, it seems Michael O'Hanlon has decided to expand his Brookings funded Bush apologies to health care. After gushing over the "rich array of options for policy-makers as well as Americans in general to consider" he zero's in on:

1. Stop being so fat and lazy; obesity is your fault America!
2. Getting insurance is your personal responsibility. For reasons untold, a dreaded "European style" national system is impossible.
3. We should fund expansion by pushing more costs onto the back of American families.
4. "Although not directly related to health care, Americans should be encouraged to work longer hours."
5. Again, a federal solution is impossible so go for a balkanized state approach.

Ezra Klein and many others have written volumes knocking down each of these, but quickly.

1. No one disagrees that there is an element of personal responsibility, but the government also has an important role indirecting our behavior through its policies - from local land use laws that promote walkable neighborhoods and cities, to which foods we subsidize the production of, to how many hours we spent tethered to a desk working.
2. A national system is primarily impossible because jackasses like O'Hanlon keep telling every American it is impossible. While O'Hanlon claims (without any source) that 75% of Americans are happy with their private insurance, this actual study of the question puts it at 20%. Every piece of anecdotal evidence I have ever heard (including from some Brookings folks) suggests the 20% may still be to high.
3. A favorite of the Chamber of Commerce crowd. It is analogous to the Post op-ed today on how big businesses really need more public investments in transport infrastructure to keep making money but that it should be funded for by increasing the gas tax you pay to get to your job that hasn't given you a pay raise in the past four years and buy your ever-more-expensive groceries.
   
4. As he said, not related at all though again a nice shout out to the corporate crowd that thinks you should be damn grateful they are even willing to give you a job.
5. See number two, as well as Ezra Klein's article on the subject. States can be laboratories, but they cannot fix the whole problem in a country where people and countries freely move from state to state.

On a larger note, if by some small miracle anyone who gives to Brookings reads this please stop contributing until they fire that two-bit hack. If he wants to push right wing policies on which he has no expertise and is totally unqualified to talk about in an intelligent fashion, then let him go work for AEI. There's no reason he has to be allowed to use Brookings partisan identity to provide "bipartisan" cover for stupid policies.