Ryan Dashek’s March 10th article says that some people argue for socialized medicine while opponents think what we have now is best. This misrepresents the alternatives.

Our current health-care system is one form of government-controlled health care. Government dictates what services must be covered (such as the recent bills mandating coverage for autism and other mental illnesses), forces hospitals to provide certain services regardless of whether they expect to be paid and dumps huge sums of taxpayer money into the system via Medicare and Medicaid. Such interventions, and many more like them, are the cause of spiraling health-care costs.

Advocating further government involvement in health care is just asking for more of the same disease. The real alternative is free-market health care; the same (relatively) free market that continually produces computers and other electronic devices at lower cost and higher quality.

—Jim Allard UW-Madison senior