Here we are half way to an overhaul of health insurance and nowhere on a path to actually controlling health care costs. A question rarely asked is whether such costs really should be controlled--for such controls could result in very serious unintended consequences.

Looking to other nations in the developed world does not give comfort to those who strive to control health care spending. The 4.3% per year growth in U.S. health care spending places it in the middle of the developed countries comprising the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) where the average growth rate is 3.8% per year. We have a slower growth rate than Portugal, Luxembourg, Iceland, Denmark, Ireland, Japan, and Spain--all patients with government controlled health care systems. The reasons for this growth in Europe is the fact that European nations had restricted health care access for years and in these nations, pressure to increase the availability of heath care services has become acute. Canada's health care spending growth was 3.1%, less than the average, likely as a result of simply using American health care availability as a means of reducing capital spending on health care facilities in our northern neighbor. The VA system does the same by using private health care institutions to provide the high tech care not available at most VA hospitals. It is a cheaper way as long as someone else made the capital investments. This all means that adding 30 million individuals to the waiting rooms of American health care facilities will hardly yield a "bending of the health care cost curve" even if we go "all in" on a government-run system. Rather, the first unintended consequence will be filled-to-capacity waiting rooms and long wait times for the next appointment with your physician.

In a year in which we have committed over 750 billion dollars to create (or save?) American jobs, it is a bit curious to realize that we are hell bent on trying to reduce growth in one segment of the economy that has been enormously successful in creating jobs. As documented by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the health care system accounted for over 360,000 new jobs in the U.S. in 2008. In most small American cities, the local hospital is one of the most important employers. If we are successful in restraining the growth in health care spending, which segment of the economy will take the place of the reductions in health care? If we cease being the most innovative health care economy in the world, what will replace the pharmaceutical jobs, the research positions, the nurses aids, the laboratory technician positions, and the generous income taxes that well paying jobs filled by nurses and physicians generate? Green jobs? Will nurses and lab techs become builders of windmills?" The second unintended consequence will be the contraction of many local economies as more hospitals close due to falling margins. In case you think the latter is hyperbole, by 2005, nearly 20 private hospitals had shut their doors in the Delaware Valley in as many years, according to the Delaware Valley Healthcare Council. And that occurred without the proposed 500 billion dollar cut in Medicare spending.