The columnist maintains his invective-to-thought ratio through the column:

Michele Bachmann of Minnesota led House colleagues in signing a “Declaration of Health Care Independence” to complement a bill that would let Americans “purchase insurance with their own tax-free money.” Gee, why did no else think of that ingenious fix for a health care system that leaves 46.3 million uninsured and whose runaway costs are on track to eat up one-fifth of the American economy?
It was a heartening breakthrough when Obama dismissed such idiocies repeatedly in his televised meeting with House Republicans on Friday. He mocked G.O.P. legislative snake oil that promises to lower all medical costs and “won’t cost anybody anything.”

To the extent we can divine an argument here underneath all the sneering — highly patriotic sneering, to be sure — it’s pretty obviously mistaken. Allowing people to purchase health insurance for themselves with pre-tax dollars would reduce federal revenue, so it’s not “costless”; if Bachmann said otherwise, which Rich doesn’t allege, then the problem would be with her rhetoric rather than her policy proposal. And making it cheaper for people to buy insurance would be very likely to put a dent into that 46.3 million uninsured statistic. Surely even Frank Rich can see that? There are intelligent, well-informed liberals who think that Bachmann’s policy would be a mistake. But the idiocies on display in Rich’s column are not hers.