Ezra Klein responds to my post on the Citizens’ Health Care Working Group, where I lament that its tax-and-spend approach to health care shows that it was hijacked by the left—despite having a business-community chairman and Bush’s HHS Secretary on the panel. Klein provides an alternative interpretation: “the right’s prescriptions on health care didn’t even convince the panel’s Republican ringers.”

I’m new to the blogosphere, so I’m not clear what the rules are regarding subtlety. My point was that the right doesn’t have any prescriptions or even premises when it comes to health care—at least, not of their own. To compensate, they adopt the left’s premises (“we need to expand health coverage”) and prescriptions (“we need a Medicare Rx benefit”). For examples, click here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Even when the right comes across a good idea (e.g., health savings accounts), they often gravitate toward it not because they understand why it’s a good idea, but because they think it serves leftist premises (“HSAs will … reduce the number of uninsured!”). The exception that proves the rule would have to be the GOP’s Rep. John Shadegg and Sen. Jim DeMint, who have a smashing health care proposal and who know why it’s a good proposal.

In general, Republicans and conservatives do not understand health policy, and do not have a health policy agenda that distinguishes them from the Left. Then, lo and behold, we get the GOP’s top health care guy sitting on a panel that (tentatively) recommends universal coverage financed by tax increases.

Go figure.