Megan McArdle: Stupid Cupid Strikes Again!

You know how everyone says that Megan McArdle is always wrong? That's because she's always wrong. From Greg Sargent:

* REPUBLICANS COOLING ON OBAMACARE REPEAL: Politico reports that Senate Republicans are increasingly cool to using “reconciliation” to force a simple majority vote to repeal Obamacare. Naturally, this is angering conservatives. But:

Members up for reelection in 2016, and some Republicans from purple states, are leery of launching a repeal without offering any sort of replacement. They’re reluctant to take away Obamacare subsidies for the lower-income and middle class without providing an alternative path to health coverage.

Wait, what? Obamacare repeal could be politically problematic for vulnerable Senate Republicans? Isn’t the law supposed to be a sure political winner in every conceivable way for the GOP?

As the posts below this one show, McArdle became incoherent in her anger at the passage of Obamacare. Due to the "tyranny of the majority," also known as elections, Republicans would be stuck with an "entitlement" that would be difficult to take away. "The reason entitlements are hard to repeal is that the Republicans care about getting re-elected," McArdle said. Yet she also seemed to think that the Republicans could take away the infinitely more deeply entrenched social safety net.

 Republicans and other opponents of the bill did their job on this; they persuaded the country that they didn't want this bill.  And that mattered basically not at all.  If you don't find that terrifying, let me suggest that you are a Democrat who has not yet contemplated what Republicans might do under similar circumstances.  Farewell, Social Security!  Au revoir, Medicare!

  In other words, McArdle vented her spleen in rage with the usual inaccurate, inept results. It would take far, far, far too long to relate every wrong prediction but let's look at one more.

Despite expiring patents on blockbuster drugs and a wave of new regulation from the Affordable Care Act that will cost drug makers, the pharmaceutical industry will reap between “$10 billion and $35 billion in additional profits over the next decade,” a new analysis shows. 

The health law, which will bring millions of uninsured Americans health benefits beginning in January 2014, will be a critical boon to pharmaceutical industry balance sheets, increasing revenue by one-third by the end of the decade, according to a new report from research and consulting firm GlobalData of London. That means the U.S. pharmaceutical industry’s market value will mushroom by 33 percent to $476 billion in 2020 from $359 billion last year.

As you all very well know, McArdle's basis for her Obamacare hysteria is her lies about drug company statistics and her belief that Obamacare will destroy drug companies for all time. McArdle's capacity for stupidity and cupidity are infinite; fortunately her ineptitude is more amusing than dangerous. For now.