Last week was an emotionally charged one across Western New York. Thousands of people – health care workers, patients, and average citizens – waited with bated breath for the announcement from the Commission on Health Care Facilities in the 21^st Century (a.k.a "the hospital closing commission"). The commission’s announcement regarding what to close and what to combine proved to be just as controversial as expected and leaves one to wonder, "Where does the distinction between private enterprise and government begin and end?"

A commission culled by the state and empowered by the state should only be able to impact state interests. Had the commission focused solely upon government owned-and-operated health care facilities then the group would have been in the right. But they did not. Therefore the commission and the anticipated executive and legislative follow-up in Albany are in direct contrast to good governance and, basically, illegal. In all their pomposity they have ignored the basic tenet that our government was created to facilitate capitalism, not squash it.

The errant logic behind such actions can best be described as follows: Imagine a group of political cronies thrown together to travel across the state telling specific restaurants to close because, quite frankly, there are too many restaurants and they cost consumers far too much money. That is, in a nutshell, what the closing commission was empowered to do with hospitals.

Such a war upon capitalism sounds almost ludicrous by design, but if you take only a condensed snapshot of what the commission was and what it was intended to do, the commission was well-intentioned. The group was supposed to find ways to save taxes, nothing more and nothing less. Health care is a major drain on the taxpayers and the recommendations proposed by the commission will ultimately save New Yorkers billions of dollars.

But, even so, the end does not justify the means.

The cost burden was Albany’s own doing, not that of the private sector. Rather than accepting the reality of what government had to – activities such as the trimming of Medicaid benefits to realistic levels or the limiting of subsidies - Albany chose instead to lean on the private enterprises, painting the hospitals as the bad guys and demanding their closure and consolidation.

This was done because Albany - as per usual - does not have the backbone to fix itself. If the politicians and authorities were really concerned about overspending the most logical and most elementary thing to do would be to not spend tax money on hospitals. But, that is in stark contrast to how things are done in Albany. The politicians have made careers out of spending pork to maintain their incumbency and nothing is as attractive to voters as giving money to local hospitals. Unfortunately for each and every one of us, decades of this shady game of vote-acquiring bribery have come back to bite the politicians, the taxpayers and the health industry.

Had Albany accepted responsibility and limited tax subsidies to hospitals, the laws of economics would have kicked in without government’s meddling hand and posturing. All of the hospitals would have become leaner and meaner, more competitive, and in the end, would have closed, consolidated or offered a better and more affordable product or service on their own. That’s how capitalism works.

But, we are not allowed to see capitalism come to fruition because the state and the commission have decided to show us how communism works instead. By telling privately-held companies how to run their business (literally not figuratively this time around) they are meddling in affairs that they shouldn’t be.

It’s just another example of how big our government has become and is becoming, further eroding the rights of the people to practice the freedom of liberty and capitalistic pursuits that supposedly define the American economy.