Magic Words Aren't Enough | Eastern North Carolina Now

   Publisher's note: The article below appeared in John Hood's daily column in his publication, the Carolina Journal, which, because of Author / Publisher Hood, is inextricably linked to the John Locke Foundation.

    RALEIGH     One of the giants of the fantasy/science fiction genre of American literature, Jack Vance, is still with us at the venerable age of 95. In his popular Dying Earth series, Vance came up with perhaps his most influential speculative idea: that the use of magic might be bound up in a wizard's fleeting memory of words.

    There's a great deal of magic incantation in traditional fantasy literature, of course. Think of the Evil Queen consulting her spellbook to transform her appearance and concoct her poison apple for Snow White. Jack Vance's unique twist was that in his dystopian future, magicians had to recite their spells from memory, could only remember a certain number of spells at a time, and once recited a spell would disappear from a magician's memory. The concept was designed to make magic less powerful, less routine, and thus a more interesting literary device.

    So-called Vancian magic has fascinated generations of readers since it made its first appearance in 1950. By the 1970s, it had become a cornerstone of the original Dungeons & Dragons game. More recently, President Obama and his supporters appear to have practiced a little Vancian magic themselves in the form of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010.

    Can you feel the power of that magical name? Politically speaking, it was an incantation designed to give Americans the impression that the bill would protect patients and make health care more affordable, that it would "bend the cost curve" as the president would put it.

    Only, Obama and his allies got their Vancian magic backwards. They thought that repeating "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" as an incantation would cause voters to forget what the legislation actually did - drastically raise federal taxes, spending, and regulation over private health care arrangements and decisions. But all the really happened is that the bill's supporters befuddled themselves. Meanwhile, the general public came to know the legislation as ObamaCare, and dislike it.

    One reason the spell didn't take is that Americans aren't predisposed to believe the federal government can make anything cheaper by taxing, subsidizing, or regulating it. Told that 1) more people would gain access to health care, 2) insurers and consumers would have less authority and fewer incentives to bargain on price, 3) insurance would include coverage of more services, 4) taxes would go up, 5) spending would go up, and 6) all this would result in lower costs and lower federal deficits, here's how most Americans responded:

    B&ll$@#t.

    Their skepticism was warranted. Shortly after the bill's passage, some health insurers began bailing out of the market altogether, seeing the regulatory burden as too costly to shoulder. Insurers and providers alike began to plan for higher utilization, higher costs, and the inevitable government price controls that will result.

    As for the federal budget, sensible fiscal analysts quickly saw through the gimmicks the Obama administration used to yield a favorable forecast. Whatever deficit reduction the bill could be expected to bring would come entirely from higher taxes, not lower spending, and even then it was based on unrealistic assumptions about the future.

    George Mason University's Mercatus Center has just published an excellent analysis of the real fiscal impact of ObamaCare. Written by Charles Blahous, who currently serves as a trustee for the Social Security and Medicare programs, the paper explains how Medicare cuts were double-counted in the official fiscal forecasts, for example. The upshot is that "between now and 2021, the [Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act] is expected to add as much as $530 billion to federal deficits while increasing spending by more than $1.15 trillion. Despite the fondest hopes from its supporters, the passage of the [act] unambiguously darkens a dim fiscal picture."

    No amount of political hocus-pocus can obscure the truth. ObamaCare doesn't protect patients and it doesn't make care more affordable. To suggest otherwise is to create a fantasy world - only not as entertainingly as Jack Vance did.