What is seen and what is unseen...

I've referenced Bastiat before, the broken window fallacy of economics, and the law of unintended consequences. (Indeed, it sometimes seems as if I've mentioned nothing but.) In this outstanding piece, Ronald Bailey takes a look back at the US medical system from a 2020 vantage point.

The seen aspect of health care reform is that it has had some success in providing more Americans with access to vintage 2010 medical therapies. The unseen aspect is that more people are suffering from and dying of diseases that might well have been cured had the Obama version of health care reform never been enacted. As a result of health care reform, Americans forfeited 2020 medicine in favor of more equal access to 2010 treatments.

Read it all, because there's more and it's all important. Frankly, I think that he's being generous to this "reform," but the stifling effect on innovation is one of my big concerns.