The Law of Unintended Consequences

by Nathan S. –

According to a new report by the Department of Health and Human Services, under Obamacare, health care costs will increase, not decrease, over time. This is the exact opposite of what the president assured everyone in his perennial reelection campaign leading up to passage of the bill last March. It also says that the administration’s promises of cost savings by strategic cuts in Medicare are projected to submerge a percentage of hospitals and insurance providers underwater. The analysis went on to suggest that Medicare savings, as proposed by the president, are “unrealistic and unsustainable.”

HHS’ full report can be found in the latest edition of – duh!

The report, coupled with an earlier AP study showing that young adults will shoulder the burden of higher premiums in the health care overhaul, only goes to prove that you can put lipstick on a pig but it’s still a pig.

Wait a second, where have I heard that before?

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone with a grasp of governmental history. The federal government’s societal and economic intervention has almost always succumbed to The Law of Unintended Consequences.

Consider, for instance, the murder rate in the United States. In 1960 David L. Bazelon, chief justice of the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, discovered a crisis in the criminal population. The perceived “crisis” (as he saw it) was that society had an irrational urge to punish criminals instead of rehabilitate them. He wasn’t alone, popular opinion among the elites of the time (including Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Earl Warren, and Attorney General Ramsey Clark) held to Bazelon’s view. What followed were several landmark cases: Mapp v. Ohio, Escobido v. Illinois, and Gideon v. Wainwright; not to mention Durham v. United States in which the presiding Judge Bazelon magnified the range of the “insanity” defense.

Did these judicial fiats reduce the murder rate in the U.S.? On the contrary, between 1961 and 1974 the murder rate more than doubled and continued to climb all the way through the 1990s. The worst part was – no crisis existed in the first place. By 1960, when Chief Judge Bazelon was proclaiming a “crisis”, the murder rate was less than 1950, 1940, and 1930.

Take a look at the price controls of gasoline in the 1970s, rent control in urban areas, the restrictive use of land laws and policies that drove up the prices of California homes (like The Williamson Act, for example) and you’ll see The Law of Unintended Consequences. Obamacare is no exception.

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