Congress cannot create free market health care.

• Position: YOUR LIFE - Brief article

When people clamor for Congress to pass a "free-market health plan," they are forgetting two things: Congress only does laws, which restrict freedom. We need fewer laws, not more--and the free market is, by nature, not a plan, points out Jane M. Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Tucson, Ariz.

"Big laws like ObamaCare are designed by special-interest groups, such as the 'insurance' (managed care) cartel, Big Hospitals, Big Pharma, and influential groups that want their benefits (abortion, contraception, drug and alcohol rehab, AIDS therapy, etc.) paid for by people who would never use them."

Still, there are good ideas circulating, Orient contends. They include health status insurance, expanded health savings accounts, and critical illness insurance. "How good? We won't know without trying them. The free market--voluntary decisions by free individuals--picks the winners and losers, and allows options that work for some but not others.

"The free market cannot achieve the utopian state in which...