What's Right With Colorado Health Care

Ari Armstrong points out that there that health care climate in Colorado is better than commonly reported in the mainstream media. And he cautions us against a rush to impose massive government "reforms" that merely make the problem worse. Here are some excerpts:

"What's right with Colorado health care"

True, there are some real problems with medicine and health insurance in America; problems that can be solved through greater liberty. Yet, despite the problems, nearly everyone has ready access to the best medicine in the world.

...Seventy-seven percent of Coloradans polled said they receive good or excellent quality of health care, according to polling data from Hill Research Consultants reviewed at a March 28 meeting of Colorado's Blue Ribbon Commission for Healthcare Reform (also known as the "208 Commission" after its authorizing legislation. A representative of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce presented the information).

Coloradans are even more enthusiastic about the health care they receive than are people elsewhere in the nation, according to a comparison to Gallup statistics, by a margin of 77 percent to 65 percent.

However, while most people are happy with their own health care, they're concerned about medical care "as a whole." The polling data reveal that 60 percent of Coloradans think the quality of health care in Colorado "as a whole" is good or excellent. Only 33 percent think that health care "coverage" in the "state as a whole" is good or excellent. Part of the drop probably has something to do with all the political preachers of health care doom and gloom.

...No, it's not time to page Dr. Pangloss -- we do not live in the best of all possible worlds. But serious reforms do not begin with the opposite presumption that American medicine is in ruins and must be subjected to wholesale, government-controlled reform. Medicine is in reasonable health and can be improved by greater doses of the American values of individual rights, liberty, and freedom of choice.