John Stossel's critical assessment of certificate-of-need programs got picked up in two West Virginia newspapers today, the Charleston Daily Mail and the Beckley Register-Herald.

Speaking to attendees at the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce Business Summit, the ABCNews 20/20 co-host likened CONs and the agencies that administer them to - what else - Bolshevik-era peoples' commissariats.

The Register-Herald:

"Regulators don't make life better, they make it worse," Stossel told the group. "In West Virginia, if you want to build a new medical facility, you have to get a certificate of need to prove that it's needed. This means instead of just building the medical facility, you have to figure out how to convince the bureaucrats that what you're doing is needed. That's what they did in the former Soviet Union. It doesn't work very well."

The Daily Mail:

To obtain a certificate of need, you have to show that your health service will be provided in a manner that discourages duplication. "But in the auto business we have gross duplication," Stossel said. "And yet the competition brings us cars that are much better than a planned economy can produce. But West Virginia politicians think they know best when it comes to health care."

Both papers also quoted Stossel, most recently the author of Myths, Lies, And Downright Stupidity, riffing in contempt of the bipartisan nanny state that ever endeavors to control or regulate otherwise peaceful human behavior so as "to protect us from ourselves."

"Patrick Henry didn't say give me absolute safety or give me death," said Stossel. "What happened to liberty?"