If you’re a writer or reporter for an outlet that caters to “progressives,” you naturally slant everything to cast freedom in a bad light and extol the state. After all, you see your role as an advocate for the transformation of America.

In his latest Bastiat’s Window post, Bob Graboyes looks carefully at an NPR story where a child was bitten by a poisonous snake, had to be helicoptered to a hospital to receive the needed antivenin, and lived. But then the parents were presented with a bill for over $142,000. Cue the boos for the greedy villains!

But, as Graboyes points out, that wasn’t really the ending. In the end, the family owed nothing. Insurance covered the cost — a private insurer that the leftists tell us are always out to cheat the policyholder. The NPR story eventually noted that fact, but still sought to leave the impression that things would have been better if we didn’t have to rely on private emergency-transportation services and private drug makers.

Graboyes challenges those assumptions. Then he asks, what if we did rely on the government? Read his examples here.