The Damage We Can't Measure

By now we've had enough time to go through all the stages of grief over the Obamacare ruling. We have seen what the tax increases are going to look like once this abomination is implemented but what isn't being talked about are the unquantifiable costs that are bound to follow. There is the obvious cost of conservatives feeling more and more alienated by the professional left that sees us as nothing more than backwards folks who live in flyover-land but there is a much more serious consequence that must be considered; that of young people considering becoming doctors.

I have been talking to a few friends of mine who are thinking about going to medical school in the coming years and all of them are rightfully very concerned with what the ACA will mean for that profession. Most of them are not very political but, when it comes to this one issue, they are forced to be. This law affects every single person who is currently in or thinking about med school as it is a huge investment of both time and money. What the ACA has effectively done is introduce a huge element of uncertainty to the medical community, it has politicized medicine. I don't know about you but I want our best and brightest to enroll in med school but now the smartest people considering medical school are balking at making the investment because the prospect of being a doctor just got a whole lot hazier thanks to this law. Quoting one of my friends considering medical school: 

I love love love medicine. I would love to do surgery...but is it worth it? I don't want the government dictating how I run my practice. It will be a cold day in hell before I go to school for an additional 9 years to have that sh*t happen.  

Now you can try to argue the point of the author here about "the ACA doesn't dictate how doctors run their practices" but that would be missing the point which is that any intelligent person considering med school is trying to make a wise financial investment. The ACA has essentially raised the risk element of that investment to a high enough level that bright potential doctors-to-be are opting for more certain career choices and who can blame them? The effect of this won't be felt in 2013 or 2014 but much further down the line. The end result is a smaller pool of doctors, an overall lower quality of care, and generally less available healthcare for ALL Americans. This runs completely counter to the intentions behind the ACA, which was to provide healthcare to more Americans. I think a certain Milton Friedman quote sums it up:

One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.

I understand the good intent behind the law and I think conservatives embrace the good intentions (despite the left characterizing us as heartless) but we understand that there are better ways than using the sledgehammer that is the federal government to do the job of a scalpel.

I truly hope that the mistake that is the ACA is realized by those on both sides of the aisle who are rational enough to realize that this was not the way to achieve this goal. I fear, however, that too many folks are happy to blindly say that because the ACA is a victory for the political left that it is good policy. I fear that kind of stubborn political pride is going to keep this policy in place long enough to cause the American medical commnity irreparable damage. 

As they say, the path to hell is paved with good intentions....


And a final thought, here is an apt quote considering recent events: 
"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." - Reagan