The "law of unintended consequences" describes the general sociological principle that for every action there is an unintended or unanticipated outcome.1 An influential examination of the concept was published in 1936 by American sociologist Robert K. Merton and identified five factors that can cause unintended consequences when we attempt to effect social change.2 It is worth noting that lack of adequate knowledge (i.e., ignorance) and "error" are two prominent factors in Merton's list.3
Employer-sponsored healthcare is both a defining characteristic of the U.S. healthcare system and an unintended consequence. It arose from President Franklin Roosevelt's 1942 Executive Order freezing employee wages. 4 Because employers could not use higher wages to retain workers, they found a work-around in the form of employee benefits – especially health care insurance – which they used as a recruiting and retention tool.5 The Internal Revenue Service further encouraged the trend by exempting health insurance benefits from taxation.6 These two measures are often credited for the U.S.' unique and expensive reliance on a healthcare system heavily dependent on insurers, networks, administrators, regulators, utilization reviewers and sundry other parties that stand between a doctor and their patient. Although it's too early to know whether another major change is at hand, what is clear is that a new federal law with the stated purpose of saving consumers from surprise medical bills has its...
MOCA admits its products were wrongly described as TGA-approved. More than 99 per cent of medicinal cannabis products are not TGA-approved. An online medicinal cannabis prescriber has admitted i...