Unintended, but not unforeseeable

The Wall Street Journal reports that ObamaCare has had all kinds of unintended side effects, one of which is that Americans are now going to their doctors to get prescriptions for aspirin and cough syrup.

Why is that? Well, Washington used to give us a tax break on over-the-counter medications -- if you wanted to, you could set aside money, tax-free, in a health spending account to cover over-the-counter expenses such as pain relievers and diaper rash cream. As part of ObamaCare, the Democrats decided they wanted to "curb wasteful healthcare spending" by removing that tax exemption.

It never ceases to amaze me how politicians think they can just slap a new tax down and that people will go on behaving as they always have, thereby producing more money for the government, or else change their behavior in ways that politicians want them to. It never occurs to them that taxes spur tax-avoidance behaviors. Man wants to be free to do as he chooses. So when a new tax makes it harder for him to do that, he doesn't stop doing what the politician doesn't want him to, or keep doing it the same way and paying taxes on it. He tries to find a way to keep doing what he was doing without paying the extra tax!

In this case, the tax-avoidance behavior that ObamaCare has produced is that cost-conscious Americans are going to their doctors to get prescriptions for medications that don't require a prescription! That means: Even the nanny state agrees that these medications are safe enough that Americans should be allowed to make their own decisions about whether or not to take them, without being chained by the requirement of a prescription...but now Americans have to waste their doctors' already scarce time getting prescriptions so they can save on their tax bills!

We already have a physician shortage (and it's going to get far worse as the population ages). When was the last time you saw a doctor and didn't have to sit in the waiting room? And now we're going to exacerbate that by placing extra pressure on doctors to fill out even more paperwork (that's on top of the rest of the extra paperwork imposed by ObamaCare's myriad regulations and requirements) just so that patients can buy the same drugs they were buying already without needing to ask a doctor first? Effing brilliant, Washington!