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The short editorial "Health insurance's spiral" (Our View, Dec. 16) nails the problem of our health care system: rising costs. And it would be nice if our rising costs could be made to vanish by waving your no-more-free-market wand at them.
Alas, that seems unlikely by means of a health care act where the only brake on rising health costs will be whatever reluctance to pay for it can be mustered by a federal government that increased our national debt in the past decade at a rate more than 30 times that of the 38 percent rise in health insurance costs.
Your condemnation of the free market seems ironic, too, in the face of a health care law whose central fiscal provision demands that insurance companies compete across state lines — a freer free market at the heart of the program.
The free market, admittedly, doesn't look much like the white knight to rescue us from our health-care-cost problems. But neither is it the bogeyman. It might be shortsighted, probably counterproductive, maybe even disingenuous, to scapegoat it.
Steve Walker
Spanish Fork