Squelching Discovery

clipped from www.realclearpolitics.com "Choice, competition, reducing costs -- those are the things that I want to see accomplished in this health reform bill," President Obama told talk-show host Michael Smerconish last week. Choice and competition would be good. They would indeed reduce costs. If only the president meant it. Or understood it. In a free market, a business that is complacent about costs learns that its prices are too high when it sees lower-cost competitors winning over its customers. The market -- actually, the consumer -- holds businesses accountable and keeps them honest. No "public option" is needed. So the hope for reducing medical costs indeed lies in competition and choice. Today competition is squelched by government regulation and privilege. But Obama's so-called reforms would not create real competition and choice. They would prohibit it. Nobel laureate F.A. Hayek taught that competition is a "discovery procedure."