The author is
Somers warns:
Medical care will be degraded, the costs will skyrocket, and most frightening of all, your most intimate and personal information is now up for grabs. And then there is another consideration: It's the dark underbelly of the Affordable Care Act reminiscent of what Lenin and Churchill both said. Lenin: "Socialized medicine is the keystone to the arch of the socialist state." Churchill: "Control your citizens' health care and you control your citizens."
Philip Bump and Jonathan Chait have both written takedowns noting, politely, that the piece does not provide the sort of airtight argument you might expect from the star of the first five seasons of "Three's Company."
I would add that this is not Somers' first foray into writing about health care. In 2010 she wrote an under-discussed piece warning against the dangers of water fluoridation:
Most health authorities suggest drinking at least eight glasses of water per day for good health. How much fluoride are you getting when you drink a glass of artificially fluoridated water? About the same as if you swallowed a pea-sized blob of toothpaste - which the label clearly tells you not to do. If it is not safe to swallow eight blobs of toothpaste with FDA-approved fluoride per day for life, or take eight pills containing this amount of fluoride, why are we told it's OK to drink this amount of the diluted industrial waste that has never been FDA-approved for human consumption?
And she's written a whole book about how you can treat cancer with alternative medicine instead of chemotherapy.
So, if the Journal wants more columns drawing on Somers' expertise, they should be able to get them.