I recall that bygone era 15 or so years ago when “intellectually serious” (by David Brooks’s standards) conservatives such as Paul Ryan railed against having healthy people paying for sick people. To which anyone with half a brain replied, “Uhhh, … that’s kind of how insurance works, genius.” And, of course, thinking just a LITTLE bit more, we realize that people who are healthy now won’t always be so. Age has a way of doing that to you. So people who pay more than they take when they’re young end up taking more than they pay later in life (if they’re lucky). Somehow, people used to understand this. Until the current breed of conservative (Conservativiticus moronicus) came along.