In this week's edition of The Week In Blog at Bloggingheads.tv, The Heritage Foundation's Conn Carroll pushed an argument voiced by another conservative blogger Patrick Ruffini: that the initial intention of the public health insurance option was to create a Trojan Horse that would bring about single-payer health care and the demise of private insurance. The proof? Prof. Jacob Hacker's original policy papers.
As Ruffini blogged: "It was first raised in 2007 by Berkeley economist Jacob Hacker, and popularized as a device that would "someday magically turn into single payer." ... reading through the founding documents of the public option is about as damning as if one got ahold of a secret dossier of Milton Friedman's proclaiming school vouchers a necessary 'compromise' that would eventually usher in the death of public education in America."
One problem with that story: the "founding documents" from Hacker say the exact opposite.
