To the Editor:

My prior letter suggested that, regardless how much we spend on direct healthcare welfare, the general healthcare market should be free of arcane regulations, operating freely to avoid political hiding of the true costs. The respondent echoed the progressive view of many that economic principles of free markets are “heartless” determiners of “winners and losers” on a “tilted playing field” and the enemy of “domestic tranquility.”

Excluding fraud, both buyer and sellers are better off (both “winners”) when free to mutually agree on values concluding in exchanges of goods and services. If sellers value too high or buyers too low, no exchange will take place and neither benefit (both “losers”). Political valuation always prices below mutual valuations of sellers and buyers, resulting in more buyers, fewer sellers and fewer completed exchanges (both “losers”) unless subsidized by non-buyers (“losers”). Political tilting of the healthcare playing field has promoted healthcare and insurance monopolies, a single mandated method of access that has increased costs, reduced choices of providers and insurance plans and borrowed from posterity.

Progressivism views “other” people as heartless despite, historically, most schools, hospitals and charity organizations have been started by private and religious philanthropy. Replacing private charity with political welfare changes attitudes of receivers from gratitude to entitlement and of contributors from compassion to resentment or apathy. Rather than funding the most worthy and effective organizations, funds are extracted to fund a single political organization, regardless of effectiveness.

Free markets are voluntary and non-violent, while government is always involuntary and enforced by taking assets, imprisoning or other violent means. The question is, are we to be a nation of takers or givers; one of negative or positive reinforcement; one of violent (political) or tranquil (free) exchange, whether commercial or philanthropic? Are we going to have a society where others dictate the kind and quantity of products and services we must, or cannot, purchase or sell? Dictatorships are not determined by the form of government, but by the powers they exhibit.

Prosperity of the masses is invariably associated with freedom under rule of law. The limited powers (which did not include healthcare) granted in Art. I, Sec. 8 of the Constitution were the framework established to obtain the objectives stated in the Preamble to “…insure domestic Tranquility, …promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty…” The Preamble granted no powers. How is our domestic tranquility doing lately without liberty?

Eldon L. Rash

Bedford