Via Matt Yglesias’s Twitter feed: a really disgusting round of conservative class-baiting, mocking those who lack insurance and suffer as a result.

It’s really quite simple, and it’s really been quite simple for at least this past year: there are those who care about protecting the uninsured, and there are those who don’t. There are those who think it’s a problem that 30 million or more Americans suffer and die needlessly, and there are those who don’t. If you see it as a problem, you search for ways to solve it; if you don’t, you don’t.

Of course there are those who believe that government just cannot solve the problem. But these folks have proposed remarkably thin gruel in response; e.g., the Republican “plan” that will only cover 3 million people. The only reasonable conclusion is that Republicans don’t think there’s an actual problem.

If they could come right and say that they don’t care about the uninsured, at least we’d have some honesty. But they know that Americans want health coverage for their uninsured countrymen. So they have to come up with “solutions” that don’t actually solve anything and cost very little. Health insurance, in this mode, is about marketing rather than solving problems: Republicans can continue to market themselves as the party of fiscal discipline and mock Democrats as “tax and spend”, all without actually doing anything.

So again, the choice is simple: either you think it’s a problem that tens of millions of your fellow-Americans lack insurance and can go bankrupt just by getting sick, or you don’t. If you do, there’s one political party that’s trying to solve it, and one that views the uninsured as a marketing tool. If you believe that the uninsured are a problem, but you have problems with the Democrats’ plans, do all you can to fix those plans. Don’t look to Republicans for a solution, because all they have to offer is empty sloganeering.