Hsieh LTE in Rocky Mountain News

The March 31, 2008 Rocky Mountain News printed my LTE responding favorably to their 3/9/2008 editorial on free market health care form:

Free-market options finally being aired

Thanks to the Rocky Mountain News for highlighting some positive free-market alternatives in the health-care debate ("The coming debate over health care," March 9). Measures such as House Bill 1327 (which allow the purchase of insurance across state lines) are good because they allow consumers the choice between the best offerings of all 50 states.

At a more fundamental level, such free-market reforms are good because they respect an individual's right to spend his own health-care dollar according to his judgment, for his own benefit. In contrast, false "reforms" (such as expanding Medicaid or imposing insurance mandates), merely raise costs, decrease access and force more people to become government dependents, as has happened in Tennessee and is happening in Massachusetts.

Bureaucrats then decide how people's health-care dollars may be spent, not the individual patients and doctors.

I'm encouraged that Colorado is finally discussing some genuine free-market health-care reforms!

Dr. Paul Hsieh
Sedalia, CO