POT PERSPECTIVES

(Re: "Pot at the Tea Party," letters, April 29.) Boulder Weekly
letter-writer Brain Sherwin writes in the April 29 edition, "And
don't tell us that the free market will take care of [uninsured sick
people], because it's had multiple decades to get it right and it hasn't."

But is that really true? And what is a free market
anyway?

A free market is a market where the government's only roles are to
protect people participating in it from force and fraud, to settle
disputes and to enforce contracts. If there is any other government
interference in the market, by definition it's not a free market.

Does the U.S. health care market over the past few decades meet the
definition of a free market? Not at all, because government
interference in the health care market is everywhere:

Doctors, nurses and pharmacists are licensed by the government. The
FDA controls which medical procedures and drugs are permitted and
drives up health care prices with Byzantine testing requirements.
Almost half of every health care dollar spent in the U.S. is spent by
government, through such programs as Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP,
government employee health coverage and VA health benefits, among others.

The states mandate certain health care insurance coverage (Colorado
has 51 mandates), but bar buying health insurance across state lines.
The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) forces
hospitals and ambulance services to provide care to anyone needing
emergency health care treatment regardless of citizenship, legal
status or ability to pay.

Government interference in the health care market is so pervasive that
the DEA is waging a war on sick people by making doctors fearful of
prescribing adequate pain medication and outlawing beneficial drugs
such as medical marijuana. One cannot even buy certain cold and hay
fever medications without signing your name and showing
government-issued identification.

The U.S. health care market has been clearly dominated by government
interference for many decades. That's not a free market. Libertarians
say it can only be called a "politically controlled" market; a truly
free market would indeed solve most health care problems.

Chuck Wright, Westminster