Is Tri-Partisan a word? Probably not, but it doesn’t matter. Because all I really want to say is that Colorado’s Healthcare Price Transparency Ballot Measure is truly NON-partisan.

Colorado’s effort to enact real price transparency in healthcare went to committee in the Colorado House with strong bipartisan sponsorship and support from Democrats and Republicans. Now the Libertarian Party of Colorado has added its endorsement, agreeing that every Coloradan should have the right to do what the legislature couldn’t—vote to ensure we have free, fair and competitive markets in healthcare.

I’d like to thank Wayne Harlos, the party chair, and the entire board of the Libertarian party for their endorsement. Sitting in on their board meeting, it was clear to me that free, fair and competitive markets are among their most important values. As Americans, we should all feel the same way. We have over two hundred years of experience telling us that the most powerful force in the world is that of the free market.

While there are many well-intentioned politicians trying to figure out how to improve our healthcare system, in the end they can’t do it alone. Government can ensure the safety of healthcare systems and can promote access to healthcare by subsidizing the cost for those who need our help, but government has never proven successful at driving down cost or promoting greater efficiency. Government cannot substitute for the forces of the market in ensuring proper supply and demand balances, simplifying the business side of healthcare, and ensuring the voice of the patient is truly reflected in the healthcare delivery market. That is all best accomplished through competitive forces.

Government payers already comprise more than 50% of healthcare (Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, the military, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, government employees, and others). While there is no clear path to getting government out of healthcare, and that is not our focus right now, we can partner with government by ensuring a highly functional and competitive marketplace that drives the benefits of free and fair markets. That can only be done by us—the people. Many other aspects of government are built on competitive foundations. The Department of Defense allows companies to bid to make everything from bullets to fighter jets. Contractors compete for government highway contracts. But in healthcare, free market competition is absent because a small group of highly monopolistic companies dominate the system. These private sector forces not only control the private insurance side of the market, they also control government with their big money influence. Believe it or not, it is not government sponsored healthcare that is the problem here. It is the big money pharmaceutical companies, health insurance carriers, and monopolistic hospital systems that fight to maintain the limits on competition, both in the government sector and the private sector. The problem is politics, not government-run healthcare. We saw that last week as President Trump signaled that he would back off of his promise to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices.

The legalized cloud of secrecy that is the current norm in healthcare protects these dynasties and their unfair profit streams from competitive forces, whether the buyer is a government agency or the private sector. Sometimes, you have to know who your enemy really is in order to effectively combat it.

We can only get this done with your help. We need to end the BS in healthcare pricing and to have a little fun to help the fundraising, we’ve just had 1,000 BS Flags (see below) donated to Broken Healthcare. Until we run out, donate $25 and we’ll send you an official BS Flag. Donate $50 or more and we’ll send you ten of them to share with your friends.  Even if you’ve donated before, we have two months of signature collection to go and we need to raise a lot more money to get it done.