Gov. Rendell recently made the politically motivated claim, "two Pennsylvanians die each day from the lack of health insurance."

Using Rendell's logic, it is equally accurate -- and absurd -- to state that at least six Pennsylvanians die each day because they are on government health insurance, and four more die because of government regulations and interventions in health care.

The basis of Rendell's claim is a Families USA "report" citing data that, nationally, 22,000 adults -- including 710 in Pennsylvania -- die annually because they lack health insurance. Unfortunately, Rendell's cure -- more government health care -- is worse than the disease.

The report and similar studies use statistics showing lower survival rates following diagnoses among the uninsured than those with private insurance. What they ignore, however, is that statistics also show lower survival rates among those with government insurance: Medicaid and Medicare participants. Both Medicaid and Medicare have lower survival rates than do the uninsured.

As David Gratzer writes in The Cure, "Their paper ... found even lower survival rates for those with Medicaid. In other words, if lack of insurance can be argued to have a negative effect on health, Medicaid coverage is worse. Taking their conclusion a step further, it would seem that the nation's poor would do better if we scrapped Medicaid."

Naturally, neither the lack of health insurance nor the presence of government health insurance kills people. That is, no deaths are caused because individuals lack insurance. But the data demonstrate that government health insurance provides a lower quality of care than private insurance.

Putting more individuals on government-run health insurance would diminish, not improve, the quality of health care in Pennsylvania. Instead, policies should be adopted to increase the affordability of private insurance.

For more information, see the Commonwealth Foundation's PolicyPoints, Health Care Reform, and its report on Medicaid Reform.

Matthew J. Brouillette is president and chief executive officer of the Commonwealth Foundation. For more about Brouillette, click here.

The "free market" has not been tried in health care. Government mandates what you have to cover (PA has 38 mandates, estimated to increase the number of uninsured by 9%). There is little choice and competition among doctors and medical providers - in fact, certificate of need laws often prevent competition. Americans pay as much for government health coverage of others in taxes for Medicaid and Medicare as they do for themselves. The tax code is manipulated towards employer provided insurance (a practice instituted when wage controls were in place). And health insurance - because of this government intervention - does not work anything like a free market, like say, in auto-insurance: http://www.commonwealthfoundation.org/commentary/treating-symptom-rather-cause.

For an idea of what a world in which we had a free market in health care would look like, I recommend checking out these books:
The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care
Healthy Competition: What's Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It
NCPA's Handbook on State Health Care Reform (Chapter 11)

We need some type of federally-mandated healthcare provision. I don't claim to have the answers, but one thing that has been tried and failed miserably is letting the Free Market provide for the healthcare of our citizenry. Let's try something else.