In a follow-up post, Ezra writes:

The big win for progressives is covering the uninsured. Whether that coverage is public or private is a secondary (which is not the same as saying unimportant) concern. The reverse goes for conservatives. Covering the uninsured is not a loss for them. But if the vehicle for covering the uninsured was the nationalization of the insurance sector, that would’ve been. That didn’t happen. Instead, we entrench the private-insurance sector (conservative!) while imposing some new regulations to curb its worst abuses in the individual and small group markets (liberal!), and attempt to move toward a universal health-care system that retains a for-profit insurance industry. We are nearly alone among industrialized nations in attempting that trick.

Whoa, back up. Entrenching the private-insurance sector is a big win for conservatives? Two points: One, no it’s not. I don’t know any conservatives who wish to “entrench” private-insurance companies by subsidizing their product and then forcing people to buy it. Most favor letting people keep more of their own money and allowing them to shop for tailored products in a more intelligently regulated marketplace.

Two, bringing the insurance industry under government control does not “entrench” it, if by that Ezra means the Democrats’ bill would foreclose the possibility of private insurance eventually being supplanted by a single-payer system. In fact, it makes this scenario much more likely. Once the government starts subsidizing an activity through the private sector, good politicians can simply wait a few years and then come up with innumerable accounting tricks to show that it would be cheaper and more efficient if the government simply paid for the activity directly. Sound farfetched? That’s exactly what’s happening with student loans right now.

Further reading: “Which Way, Not How Far,” by Yuval Levin.