Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney recently discussed an alternative to the Affordable Care Act that would make the health insurance system more like a “consumer market”—applying free-enterprise principles to the nation’s healthcare system and letting competition drive down prices while increasing choice and quality—rather than operating like what he characterizes as a “government-managed utility.”

In other words, he is suggesting precisely the model that has made Medicare Part D such a resounding success. Participant satisfaction rates pushes 90 percent. The program’s cost is below budget, with an anticipated price tag of nearly $120 billion less than originally estimated over the next decade; and premiums are lower than expected.

Smart partnership between government and the free market works.

It works at keeping costs low and, most importantly, for improving care. As the Journal of the American Medical Association recently reported, “Implementation of Medicare Part D was followed by increased use of prescription medications, reduced out-of-pocket costs, and improved medication adherence.” And this, in no small measure, significantly reduces more drastic medical interventions, which in turn reduces our overall national health care spending.

It’s time for many on the left to address their PDDD (Part D Deficit Disorder) and embrace a free market solution to health care reform.

Romney also wants to divert federal Medicaid money and other federal funding to state governments, making them responsible for covering the uninsured. He correctly recognizes that states are laboratories of invention and that some labs are more successful than others—witness the success of “Healthy Indiana” versus the albatross of the Bay State’s “Commonwealth Care.” (The Governor speaks from personal experience.)

If the Supreme Court doesn’t entirely repeal the Affordable Care Act, Romney said he would work to repeal whatever remains of it on his first day as president by granting a waiver to all 50 states to opt out of the legislation’s restrictions.

“We can get health care to act more like a consumer market, and if we do that and we stop making it like a big government-managed utility, we’re going to see better prices, lower costs, and better care,” says Romney. “It’s happened everywhere we’ve applied consumer-market principles. Free enterprise is the way America works. We need to apply that to health care.”

Amen.

Peter J. Pitts is President of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest and a former FDA Associate Commissioner