No to universal healthcare
To the Editor:

The fundamental question in health care is the same as the fundamental question in so many aspects of our lives: who is in control, the government, or you? Government intrusion into our daily lives is so pervasive that many people have come to accept it as the norm. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1788, "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground." The extent to which we have failed to halt this "natural progress" is evident in the fact that the feds now control the size of the holes in our Swiss cheese, the amount of water in our toilets, and a million other details of our lives. If we allow them, they will take over our health care system, and if you are unhappy with your medical care today, just wait until it's controlled by the feds and they decide what services, tests, and treatments you receive; when and what doctors you can see; and what hospitals you can use. There is abundant evidence that this is how it works in countries with government controlled medical services, and those who don't believe this just haven't done their homework. Those who would have us believe that the U.S. Social Security and Medicare programs are "very effective" must not have noticed that both programs are on unsustainable courses: Medicare faces insolvency during the lifetime of most greybeards and Social Security is expected to follow suit perhaps 20 years later.

The U.S. Health Care System does have its problems, and nobody I know thinks it should remain as is; at the same time, a government take-over is not the answer. Quite the opposite: government should step aside and let the creative forces of the free market address the problem. And much as some would like to believe that the priority of our elected officials should be to "put people first," that's not their job. Their job is to attend to what the Constitution and their oath of duty require, not to what generosity and humanity require. President Franklin Pierce (1852- 1856) put it this way, "I readily and, I trust, feelingly acknowledge the duty incumbent on us all as men and citizens, and as among the highest and holiest of our duties, to provide for those who, in the mysterious order of Providence, are subject to want and to disease of body or mind; but I can not find any authority in the Constitution for making the Federal Government the great almoner of public charity throughout the United States." It's a quantum leap from Pierce's understanding of the Constitution, to the kind of thinking that holds health care as a "basic human right" to be provided by the federal government. The Founding Fathers did not include health care as a basic human right in the Declaration of Independence or in the Bill Of Rights, nor did they grant Congress the authority to provide or guarantee universal health care. As Americans we enjoy a plethora of rights. The right of a citizen to have his government force his friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens to pay for his health care (at the point of a gun, if necessary), is not one of them.

Cordially, Chuck Esposito

Suches, Ga.