Bons mots from Greg Mankiw

First he criticizes Barack Obama for dropping the "cadillac" health plan tax and replacing the lost revenue with a tax on unearned income:

This change was probably made to attract more House Democrats. It will likely make the plan even less attractive to congressional Republicans.

So whereas zero Republicans were going to vote for the plan before...

Next he's on to the proposal to cap insurance rate hikes:

Very, very strange. You would think that all those future Nobel-prize-winning economists working for the President would explain to him the history and economics of government price controls. Imposing price controls certainly wasn't President Nixon's finest hour.

Alternatively he could have those economists turn to the chapter in Greg Mankiw's Econ 101 textbook on how to regulate prices of natural monopolies.