How health-care repeal will burn the Republicans

The South Fulton Fire Department was right to let the Cranicks' house burn. You can't sell fire insurance but let people pay after the flames have begun. If you do, people will sign up after their houses catch on fire, rather than before. That's a bad business.

Which is why we don't generally run firefighting as an insurance business (this, actually, was a weird case where a city's fire service sold protection in a rural area outside the city's limits). We run it as a collective good. People have to pay, and firefighters never let someone's house burn. We're comfortable letting people make bad financial decisions when it comes to their television purchases, or the car they drive, or whom they date. We're not willing to do it when the consequence is that they and their children quite literally die in a fire. But that's what free-market firefighting would require.

Even the rock-ribbed conservatives at the National Review aren't comfortable letting the invisible hand refuse to lift a finger to save a family's home. "What moral theory allows these firefighters (admittedly acting under orders) to watch this house burn to the ground when 1) they have already responded to the scene; 2) they have the means to stop it ready at hand; 3) they have a reasonable expectation to be compensated for their trouble?" asked Daniel Foster. Some of his colleagues defended the firefighters, and Think Progress gleefully highlighted the callous arguments.

Have fun trying to repeal health-care reform, guys.

When liberals explain why health care needs an individual mandate, the traditional metaphor is firefighting: Everyone needs to buy insurance for the same reason that everyone needs to buy fire protection. But if you leave the market unregulated, some people won't buy -- or won't be able to afford -- fire protection. And we're not comfortable letting their houses burn down. Similarly, if you leave health coverage to the market, some people won't buy it, and others won't be able to afford it, and then, when they get sick and need it, insurers won't sell it to them. But we're not comfortable letting them die in the streets. Hence, the health-care law.

When Republicans talk about repealing the legislation, they keep the argument abstract. It's about freedom. About American values. About Nancy Pelosi not reading the bill. When they actually try to repeal the legislation, things are going to get concrete in a hurry. It's going to be about this child with that condition being rejected by insurers. And she's going to be adorable, and her parents are going to tearful, and voters will be able to relate.

Already, Republicans are running from that argument, trying to pretend that they'll somehow preserve the protections for preexisting conditions while repealing everything that makes those protections possible. But the bill's unpopular parts are inextricably intertwined with its popular parts. Remove the unpopular ones and you're asking firefighters to sell insurance for homes that are already engulfed in flames.

Here's my prediction for health-care repeal: The GOP will either never really try it, lose on it, or, most likely, cut a deal to add some more conservative pieces to the bill (think malpractice reform, more consumer-driven plans and other things they could've gotten by just negotiating in the first place). But Republicans who think this is going to be easy because public opinion is against the Democrats should remember that before Democrats got a specific bill, public opinion was overwhelmingly on their side. When Republicans are forced to get specific about repeal, they're going to find themselves just as -- if not more -- unpopular. If you're not comfortable explaining why you let someone's house burn down, you're really not going to like explaining why you let insurers turn their sick child away.