November 21, 2010

Whoda Thunk It?

The New York Times discovers the Law of Unintended Consequences:

Consumer Risks Feared as Health Law Spurs Mergers
When Congress passed the health care law, it envisioned doctors and hospitals joining forces, coordinating care and holding down costs, with the prospect of earning government bonuses for controlling costs ...

... Consumer advocates fear that the health care law could worsen some of the very problems it was meant to solve — by reducing competition, driving up costs and creating incentives for doctors and hospitals to stint on care, in order to retain their cost-saving bonuses.

Yeah, nobody could have seen that coming ... except, you know, pretty much everyone who declined to buy into the Sparkly Flying Unicorn Rainbow Farts School of Magic Wand Waving. This falls squarely under the "perverse results" category of unintended consquences, and not the "unexpected" categories.

Not unexpected, that is, unless you're the New York Times, in which case you're completely flabbergasted at this "unexpected" turn of events.

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