Obamacare’s Many Negative Side-Effects Should Surprise No One

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Ludwig von Mises Institute :

Obamacare’s Many Negative Side-Effects Should Surprise No One

 

Mises Daily:Thursday, December 26, 2013 by Jordan Bruneau

 

Even left liberals are coming to realize that Obamacare is fatally flawed. Perhaps this is because fewer people will be insured at the end of the year, under Obamacare, than at the beginning of the year as insurers are forced to drop coverage. Stories of such cancellations to cancer-stricken children certainly don’t help matters. For a program whose expressed purpose is to bring insurance to more people, this irony seems even too much for the interventionists to stomach.

 

Obamacare’s negative effects, however, are simply a microcosm of government policy in general. Virtually all well-intended (assuming they are in fact well-intended) government policies bring negative unintended consequences that hurt the very people they intend to serve. The prevalence of this paradox, called iatrogenics (originally used in the medical context to refer to doctors’ actions that hurt patients), should give pause to those who favor government intervention to solve societal problems.

 

Take rent control policies, for example, intended to make housing more accessible to those with lower incomes. In reality these policies shrink the amount of available housing because potential landlords have less incentive to rent out, and developers have less incentive to build new, units. As a result, less housing is available for those with lower incomes. Just look at the apartment shortage in New York or San Francisco, the two cities with the most stringent rent-control policies, for proof.