President Joe Biden was right when he said this week that private enterprises will need to lead on reducing the prices for cancer treatments and on sharing data with each other to make treatment for cancer more effective.

It’s a shame that the common sense that drove this specific observation couldn’t be more widely applied to the rest of Monday’s call by Biden for ending cancer to be our new “national purpose,” as reported by the Associated Press.

Because any effort to turn the tide on cancer — its prevention and the development of more effective and more available treatments — will not be as effectively shepherded by a centralized, top-down approach by the national government.

Instead, it will be the decentralized work in laboratories, private companies, hospitals and doctors’ offices across the country that finds new solutions to one of the most painful problems to vex the American people.

We hope that as the White House embarks on this new focus that this reality — the awesome potential of Americans to solve America’s problems without confining bureaucracy but instead with hard work and ingenuity — will come to guide the administration’s approach and that the White House will embrace the flexibility and open-mindedness to let America’s scientists and health care professionals lead rather than the bureaucrats.