Massachusetts health care and insurance are regulated to death. So the government had to step in, as in “I’m from the government and I’m here to help,” first to control insurance prices and guarantee issue in the 1990s and then to pass the Commonwealth’s 2006 health care reform plan that gave various bureaucracies almost complete control over all medical practice and of all the health insurance outside of ERISA plans.

Colorado health insurance is only half regulated to death—a number of insurers still offer policies in the state’s individual market. Policies are medically underwritten and flexibly priced. Were people in Massachusetts helped by government? The table gives prices quoted this week under the Massachusetts plan for people living in Boston, in the Colorado individual market for people living in Denver, and for Denver residents in Cover Colorado, the state’s guaranteed issue plan for the uninsurable.

The lesson?

“I’m from the government and I’m here to help” remains one of the three biggest lies in America.