Tracing consequences both seen and unseen.
Justin M. StoddardUnintended Consequences II
Posted at 9:19 pm on March 23, 2010, by Justin M. Stoddard

I wrote earlier this evening about some possible unintended consequences of the newly signed health care legislation. While attending my daughter’s orchestral debut, I thought of a few more.

-An increase in the Nanny State.

I first heard this argument put forth in my Junior year at high school: “Seat belts should be mandatory because we pay for the uninsured drivers who would get hurt without wearing them.” Since then, this argument has taken on more manifestations than I care to acknowledge. We need to regulate trans-fats, salt, cigarettes, cigars, MSG, butter, alcohol, fast cars, ad infinitum…for the same reason.

It’s about to get a whole lot worse. ‘We’ not only pay for the uninsured, now, ‘we’ pay for everybody. Since ‘we’ pay for everybody, ‘we’re’ now responsible for everybody’s health.

This is in no way hyperbolic. It’s happening right now: Brooklyn Dem Felix Ortiz wants to ban use of salt in New York restaurants.

As absurd as this sounds (and we’ve all had our laugh), his reasoning is ominous:

Ortiz says his bill is designed to save lives, just like laws that ban the use of trans fats and require chain restaurants to post nutrition information.

“It’s time for us to take a giant step,” Ortiz said yesterday. “We need to talk about two ingredients of salt: health care costs and deaths.”

He claims billions of dollars and thousands of lives would be saved if salt was taken off the menu altogether.

On second thought, perhaps this consequence won’t be so unintended, after all.

-People are going to get sicker and more obese

There is good reason to believe that the fault of our country’s current “obesity crisis” can be placed directly at the feet of well-intentioned governmental interference based on incorrect science. If we can expect the government to have an ever increasing role in what we can and cannot put into our bodies (see above), it follows that people will be lead to the conclusion that the way to maintain a healthy diet is to decrease fatty foods (red meats, butter, natural fats, etc…) and increase the intake of complex carbohydrates in the form of grains (whole wheat breads, cereals, rice, oats). This is most certainly the exact wrong thing to do.

There is enough on that subject for a whole different post (one that I believe Eric will be undertaking, soon). For the purposes of this post, it will have to suffice to say that the current model (the government backed food pyramid) is based on wildly outdated and faulty science. But, even if you don’t believe that a low-carb, higher fat diet is the road to health, at least you had a choice in the matter. Doctors have slowly been coming around to the notion that low-carb lifestyles have terrific benefits. Can anyone doubt that obesity patients (and patients with Diabetes, blood sugar problems) will soon be robbed of those choices? If the government backed model is X, you can bet that when the government pays doctors who treat obese/diabetic patients that X will be the prescription. The result will be an inescapable negative feed-back loop.

-When everyone is forced to have health care insurance, only criminals won’t have health care insurance.

As snarky as that may sound, this legislation will make criminals out of a whole new class of people. It’s really rather simple. There are no provisions for those who want to opt out. If you’re a woman and you don’t want maternity coverage…tough. If you don’t want mental health coverage…tough. If you don’t want coverage at all, for reasons that, quite frankly, are none of anyone’s business…tough.

Oh, we’re assured (wink, wink) that nobody will actually end up in jail for not buying coverage, but don’t you believe them. The end result is always the same. It’s always force.

-We will see a sharp increase in mental health cases in this country.

Everyone must now be covered for mental health. This can be as innocuous as a couple of trips a year to your therapist or as serious as treatment for Schizophrenia or OCD or ADD. Psychotropic drugs (Prozac, etc…) will also be covered.

When something is universally offered at a price below market value, people are going to naturally take advantage of that something. I imagine we are going to see a rather steep incline in the number of people seen by mental health professionals. This, of course, leads to a whole separate Pandora’s Box of unintended consequences. How much more money will be funneled into mental health, thus creating another negative feed-back loop? More people see more mental health professionals, triggering more federal money pouring into the field of mental heath, triggering more people seeing mental health professionals, etc…

Also, will more people be forced to take psychotropic drugs either based on bad advice or against their will? That, too, may be a subject for a future post.

Unintended consequences are a powerful thing. I wish more people were able to think deeply about them before jumping on bandwagons, however well intentioned they may be.

[Cross-posted at Shrubbloggers.]


Filed under: Health Care, Unintended Consequences
Comments: 4 Comments
 

4 Comments

  1. Justin for president 2012!!

    You have some valid arguments here. I only wish more American’s understood these “unintended consequences”. Like the unemployment benefit extention we talked about the other day. Extending unemployment benefits keeps people unemployed, pure and simple. We are only human after all. If the government say okay unemployed we are going to extend your benefits for 4 more weeks the average American will think to him/her self “I don’t have to find a job for 4 more weeks”. The longer unemployment benefits are available there’s no incentive to find work, thus keeping the unemployment numbers up.

    Just my two cents…

    Comment by Kimberly R. — 2010-03-24 @ 12:39 pm

  2. […] Are All Children, Now Posted at 12:46 p.m. on March 24, 2010, by Justin M. Stoddard Like I said yesterday, when everybody is responsible for everybody else, the logical outcome is, well, […]

    Pingback by The Lesson Applied » We Are All Children, Now — 2010-03-24 @ 12:47 pm

  3. […] at The Lesson Applied.] — Justin M. StoddardComments (0) […]

    Pingback by The Shrubbloggers » Unintended Consequences II — 2010-03-31 @ 1:08 am

  4. […] I said yesterday, when everybody is responsible for everybody else, the logical outcome is, well, […]

    Pingback by The Shrubbloggers » We Are All Children, Now — 2010-03-31 @ 1:16 am

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Henry Hazlitt"[T]he whole of economics can be reduced to a single lesson, and that lesson can be reduced to a single sentence. The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups."
Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson
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