In case you didn't tune into the Atlantic Wire's Morning Vid, Rush Limbaugh emerged from hospitalization for chest pain singing hosannas for American health care. In his words, "Based on what happened to me here, I don't think there's one thing wrong with the American health care system. It is working just fine, just dandy."

But it turns out, as many liberal commentators have zealously reported, that Rush was inadvertently praising an already-reformed health care system, putting him squarely in their camp. Hawaii enacted reform in the 1970s that resembles, in some measures, the Senate and House bills now under consideration. Ben Armbruster of Think Progress was among the first to trumpet Rush's accidental endorsement, and now The New Republic's Anthony Wright adds a wonky note to the razzing, spelling out more Hawaiian reforms whose fruits Rush enjoyed. One of the less-technical points on the mandate:

Hawaii's experience refutes, with real-world evidence, the opposition arguments that employer mandates are "job killers." Recent studies of the employer mandate in Hawaii--and in San Francisco, the other place in the United States with a strong employer requirement to contribute to health care--show that there was no measurable impact on jobs.

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