Once again, Paul Krugman misrepresents the facts. In today’s NY Times column, “Insurance Horror Stories,” he writes about how families are denied insurance coverage and do not receive health care. He uses the example of a little girl who became quite ill, and the insurance company canceled benefits. (He does not say if the child was denied care afterward, and something tells me that she was not. But, that would then make Krugman seem dishonest, and we surely don’t want that to happen.)

He then goes on to praise Medicare as a cost-effective program, not pointing out that without private money, the care under a universal program would quickly deteriorate. No, instead he tells us that we would then have a health care nirvana.

He writes: “If we had a universal system — Medicare for everyone — there would be no more horror stories like those reported by The Los Angeles Times. And we’d almost certainly spend less on health care than we do now.”

Whenever I write something on Canadian medical care — the program Krugman touts the most — invariably I receive both hate mail and horror stories about people being denied care. Of course, in Krugmanland, there are no horror stories from Canada, since placing a zero price on something automatically makes it non-scarce. This is what passes for High-Level Economics at Princeton University, I guess.