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The Atlantic has a dizzying account of the real potential damage inherent in the Republican health care “plan”. The wealthy and healthy buy in for tax-free fun; the sick, poor, and infirm are the only remaining participants in managed care, the premiums of which (necessarily) rise. Result: More uninsured. But the kicker is the long-term cost of the health savings accounts:

The Bush administration calculates that HSAs would cost the treasury $150 billion over ten years. But, by making both contributions and withdrawals tax-free, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities notes, the plan “breached a longstanding bright-yellow line,” and is likely to provoke a rush to enroll. The long-term cost to the Treasury could be “hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars of what otherwise would have been taxable income.” Creating such structural deficits, on the testimony of Karl Rove, is the GOP’s “starve the beast” strategy. Drained of funds, the beast—i.e. the federal government—will be unable to fund even basic services. That will weaken support for federal taxes, and provoke a tax revolt, which will further erode services, deepening the tax revolt. The idea is to return the federal government to the night-watchman state of the nineteenth century.