My colleague Bob Moffit, who runs our Center for Health Policy Studies, wasn’t too please with Paul Krugman’s recent column comparing public schools to the universal health-care system he’d like to impose on America. Here’s an excerpt of the letter Moffit sent to the New York Times in response:

Where public schools are failing, middle- and upper-income kids can get out and enroll in better, private schools. It’s poor kids who get trapped in poorly performing schools. To give them an equal opportunity at education, The Heritage Foundation wants poor kids to receive vouchers or tuition assistance that would enable them to enroll in a decent school. Krugman ignores the quality issue entirely.

Choice is a critical factor in health care, as it is in education. Most families, regardless of income, have little choice when it comes to health coverage. If they’re lucky, they get coverage through an employer. If not, their only practical option is to buy it on their own‚Äîand pay a heavy tax penalty that could add up to 50 percent on their premium costs‚Äîor go bare.

Krugman wants to solve the problem by enrolling Americans in a government health care monopoly, where government officials will make the key decisions. Heritage proposes to offer everyone health care tax credits‚Äîa “progressive” system with additional assistance to low-income families‚Äîso all can pick, and own, the health policy that suits them best.

Put another way, the choice is between personal freedom or socialized medicine. Paul Krugman and his co-workers at the New York Times may want the latter, but fortunately Americans have show little appetite for a government-run system.