Just ask yourself what your car insurance would cost if everyone demanded it as a government-guaranteed “right.” Imagine car repair shops having to go through a 10-year approval process — as pharmaceutical companies must — before offering a service that the government will then provide to millions of people as a “right.” Then ask what the response would be if some people broke with the consensus and said that car repairs were a service to be paid for. They would be shouted down as immoral — while people demanded that their insurance pay for oil changes and ripped seats.

Congress would pass more programs. Prices would quadruple, and car insurance would become a crushing expense.

Those who want to see an end to spiraling medical costs should challenge the premises behind the government interventions.

The first premise is moral: that medical care is a right. It is not. There was no right to such care before doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies produced it. Health care is a service, which we all need, and none of us are better served by placing our lives and our doctors under coercive bureaucratic control.