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Scenes From The Health Care Jihad

Guy Gugliotta has a story in the Washington Post about Republican resistance to setting up state-level health insurance exchanges. Here's his attempt to describe the opposing views without employing loaded terms like "crazy":

Insurance exchanges, enabling individuals and small businesses to shop for medical coverage in much the same way that travelers troll the Web looking for bargain airfares, are a cornerstone of last year’s federal health-care law.
Republicans, however, regard it as a likely first step down the road to a government-controlled insurance system.

Insurance exchanges are, first of all, a perfectly market-friendly idea, one that Paul Ryan uses in his Medicare plan. Second, the law says that states that don't set up their exchanges will have the federal government step in and do it for them. Both these facts would suggest it makes a great deal of sense for states to set up some exchanges. But if they did that, they'd be implementing the Affordable Care Act, which would make them collaborators with the Death Of Freedom. So Republican governors and legislators are paralyzed between the obviously sensible solution and the party jihad against health care reform. It's pretty funny to watch, except that real people are going to get hurt in the meantime.