It's wonderful when a governmental push for medical coverage of a promising vaccine turns out to be unnecessary because insurers already have embraced the program.

That's the case with House Bill 590, legislation aimed at requiring private insurers to cover the new Gardasil vaccine against human papillomavirus, the virus linked to cervical cancer.

As state Health Director Chiyome Fukino pointed out in her testimony before lawmakers, Hawai'i's private insurers cover the vaccine for girls, as does a state juvenile vaccination program for qualifying needy children.

It makes sense that they do: The series of three shots, manufactured by Merck & Co. Inc., costs about $360, a small price to pay to avoid the suffering and far greater expense of cervical cancer treatments.

So it's available to parents who choose to have their daughters vaccinated. At this stage, that's where the state should leave it, rather than following the lead of Texas, where by executive order the governor made the vaccinations mandatory.

For starters, the pressure to add the drug to governmentally required vaccinations for schoolchildren came largely from Merck, which recently yielded to critics by suspending its lobbying efforts. Merck had funneled money for lobbying to the advocacy group Women in Government. Conservative groups opposed the campaign, saying promoting the drug would encourage premarital sex, interfering with parents' rights.

The company has continued its "One Less" advertising campaign to get the word out about Gardasil — undoubtedly hoping to secure the market before its competitor Glaxo Wellcome brings a rival drug, Cervarix, to the market.

For these reasons, the state should delay any mandates until these drugs can be further evaluated, and for the price to decline. In addition, further studies on HPV links to cancers in boys and men are ongoing, which could offer a more compelling public health rationale for a mandate.

Until then, an HPV vaccine is best left a matter of choice. In Hawai'i, government's role should be to aggressively educate the public on the facts they need to make that choice.