It’s annoying how the liberal message machine is cranking up to make a big issue of “underinsurance” — due to high deductibles — without ever admitting that Obamacare may have made the problem worse, as Byron York notes.

(To be sure: Yes, deductibles were rising before Obamacare. York seems to be a arguing that Obamacare made them rise faster — and indeed there appears to be a big jump after 2010. They’ve kept jumping since. You can easily see how Obamacare might have misguidedly accelerated the trend: 1) In addition to requiring insurers to ignore “pre-existing conditions,” it larded up “essential benefits” — so insurers had to try to claw the money back elsewhere ( i.e. deductibles); 2) It pushed people into shopping on the exchanges,  where insurers tend to compete on the basis of monthly premiums, even if those premiums don’t buy that much insurance; 3) it tossed unsubsidized solo purchasers making as little as $47,000 into exchanges with the previously uninsured. When the exchanges turned out to be filled with lots of costly, sick and risk-taking people, insurers tried to keep premiums down by raising deductibles even more. If these unluckly exchange purchasers were in a more representative, society-wide pool they would not have to pay so much, either in premiums or deductibles.***

It’s also true that high deductibles are a traditional conservative remedy for rising health care costs. They may actually be working, in that respect. But they also can discourage even insured people from getting care or drugs that they need, for fear that they will wind up bearing the full expense. This happened to me recently — I went to an emergency room but walked back out when the intake nurse wouldn’t give me an estimate of cost — and I have a large, unnecessary scar on my leg to prove it.****)

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** — If I remember right, there was a pithy bumper sticker in the 1996 campaign needling Clinton for his promise to fix the (marginal) excesses of that year’s big welfare reform bill, which he had signed: “ONLY CLINTON CAN UNDO WHAT HE HAS DONE!” In the event, the fixes were made. And Clinton at least acknowledged the flaws.

***–Families USA, a liberal lobbying group, seems to suggest (without actually blaming Obamacare, of course) that Obamacare regulations directly require higher deductibles or co-payments for some benchmark plans on the exchanges: “Due to federal requirements that govern the way silver plans are designed, these plans must have higher cost-sharing for more extensive or complex medical care” (page. 19). I don’t know what “federal requirements” they are referring to.

**** — Will display on request.

Do You Have Amnesty in that Basket? Did Ted Cruz support an immigration solution that involved legalizing the 11 million or so illegals now in the U.S.? When we last left this dispute, Cruz staffers were denying it. True, a New York Times article had asserted that Cruz was carving out a “middle ground” on immigration, offering illegals legalization (work permits that would allow them to stay here) but making stopping short of the citizenship offered in the Senate’s “Gang of 8” bill:

Asked about what to do with the people here illegally, however, he stressed that he had never tried to undo the goal of allowing them to stay.

“The amendment that I introduced removed the path to citizenship, but it did not change the underlying work permit from the Gang of Eight,” he said during a recent visit to El Paso. …

The Times’ characterization wasn’t accurate, Cruz spokesperson Brian Phillips argued. Cruz was only offering his amendment “to show that Dems won’t allow any reform without pathway to citizenship,” not because he actually supported it.  Just a parliamentary device! See this Twitter exchange with MSNBC’s Benjy Sarlin:

Benjy Sarlin:  @RealBPhil Okay so to be 100% clear: If his amendment succeeded, he still would not have supported work permits for existing undocumented?

Brian Phillips: .@BenjySarlin 100% clear: Cruz’s amendment had nothing to do with that issue. [Emphasis added]

Even some experienced Washington hands seemed to buy Phillips’ explanation.

They shouldn’t. How can I be so sure? I’ve got proof! Here’s a video, the link to which was recently sent me by alert kausfiles reader J. In it, Cruz speaks directly to immigration “advocacy groups,” and clearly embraces his legalization-without-citizenship option as a big part of a solution that he supports. The most relevant passage starts around 3:30 in:

And I’d like to make a final point to those advocacy groups that are very engaged in this issue and rightly concerned about addressing our immigration system, and in particular about addressing the situation for the 11 million who are currently in the shadows. If this amendment is adopted to the current bill the effect would be that those 11 million under this current bill would still be eligible for RPI status.** They would still be eligible for legal status and indeed under the terms of the bill they would be eligible for LPR status as well, so that they are out of the shadows, which the proponents of this bill repeatedly point to as their principle objective — to provide a legal status for those who are here illlegally to be out of the shadows. This amendment would allow that to happen …

And a second point to those advocacy groups that are so passionately engaged. In my view if this committee rejects this amendment, and I think everyone here views it as quite likely this committee will choose to reject this amendment, in my view that decision will make it much, much more likely that this entire bill will fail in the House of Representantives. I don’t want immigration reform to fail. I want immigration reform to pass, and so I would urge people of good faith on both sides of the aisle, if the objective is to pass common sense immigration reform that secures the borders, that improves legal immigration, and that allows those who are here illegally to come in out of the shadows, then we should look for areas of bipartisan agreement and compromise to come together and this amendment — I believe if this amendment were to pass the chances of this bill passing into law would increase dramatically, and so I would urge the committee to give it full consideration and to adopt the amendment. …. [Emphasis added]

Does that sound like someone using a parliamentary device merely to smoke out the Democratic position, or someone sketching “middle ground” legislation he supports?

Note: I haven’t contacted Phillips to get comment. Don’t wanna be no Free Beacon! I’ll update and add any response here.

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** — “RPI” means “Registered Provisional Immigrant,” the legal status the Gang of 8 bill would have granted illegals within a few months of its passage. Citizenship would come later.

‘Turn around, Kasich, and show me what you got’: Roger Ailes to winnow GOP presidential field. …