Proper Government Functions

The Colorado Springs Gazette printed the letter on healthcare I sent them last week:

TAKING CHARGE
People, not government, responsible for health

Marcy Morrison, the sole El Paso County representative on Colorado’s 2008 Commission for Health Care Reform, claims that her goal is to insure as many people as possible (“Morrison works to insure more Coloradans,” Metro, June 25). That’s morally wrong. The government should not attempt to enforce universal medical coverage, nor universal healthy diets, nor universal fashionable haircuts. The only proper function of government is to protect our rights.

In medicine, that means protecting the rights of health care providers, insurers and patients to contract for the services they deem in their best interest, free from government regulations, mandates and entitlements.

Only then can people act as responsible adults, rather than as wards of the nanny state.

Diana Hsieh
Sedalia