Will private companies and freely choosing individuals control our health care system, or will government? That question is the backdrop to the ongoing debate in Congress over "price negotiation" for the Medicare prescription drug benefit.

Advocates of negotiation point to a 2006 Kaiser Family Foundation survey, which found that 85 percent of Americans support allowing the government to negotiate prescription drug prices for Medicare.

But support plummets when voters learn about trade-offs. Other surveys show that only 30 percent still support negotiation when they learn that it would mean they could choose only from a limited list of government-approved prescription drugs. And only 28 percent of seniors believe that government would do a better job of getting low drug prices than the competitive marketplace.

Read more in my article this week in The Hill newspaper.