Maybe it all makes sense — from offering Rhode Island as a testing ground for federal experiments to backing an all Democrat, far-left federal delegation.  After all, if the federal government can inflict on the entire country what the Rhode Island government has inflicted locally, then the Ocean State won’t be that much worse than anywhere else.

The country will be a vast landscape of high unemployment and hopelessness.

That’s hyperbole, but it’s the general sense I get from Felice Freyer’s column in the Sunday Providence Journal, “Surprising data on R.I. insurance costs“:

Does health insurance cost too much in Rhode Island? … It may surprise you: Costs are not higher here. When the price of similar coverage is compared around the country, premiums in Rhode Island fall near the middle. …

Last week, Cynthia Cox, a Kaiser senior policy analyst, did a data run for The Providence Journal. She compared the rates that a 40-year-old would pay for the lowest-cost “silver” plan offered in each area. The median premium nationwide is $259. That plan in Rhode Island (Blue Solutions HSA 2600/5200) costs just a little more: $274.

Because Cox did the analysis for the Projo, the data doesn’t appear to be available, so we can’t know exactly how comparable “the lowest-cost ‘silver’ plan” actually is in each state.  But even so, a 6% higher premium for a middle-aged individual is “just a little”?  Rhode Island is as much as 15% more expensive than Massachusetts.

All of this elides the critical point, though: Freyer and Cox are comparing Affordable Care Act plans.  In essence, ObamaCare has inflicted on the entire country many of the mandates that Rhode Island had inflicted on its own people, which had driven our insurance up and made it a tough market for insurers.

If I were a resident of anywhere else, I’d invert the spin and be very, very worried that my state’s insurance rates were starting to make Rhode Island’s look comparatively reasonable.  I’d also worry which of Rhode Island’s other failing metrics are soon to be improved by reducing the contrast with other states.