Government care strips our freedom

Patricia Hershwitzky, Las Vegas

Sunday, Aug. 30, 2009 | 2:03 a.m.

Regarding Jim Salonisen’s letter to the editor in Wednesday’s Las Vegas Sun headlined “What part of ‘option’ don’t they understand?”:

Webster has long been dead, along with the historic meaning of many words. Worse, one person’s option has increasingly co-opted another person’s freedom, fiscally and ideologically.

Abortion, almost always promoted as a private option, has become virtually an internationally publicly funded “health care” mandate. Hate crimes have expanded to include those areas once left to private discretion and belief systems. Disagree with, counter or confront certain widely accepted behaviors and a person risks even legal action.

Moreover, simply repetitively stating something as fact does not make the assertion credible. Our leaders have falsely assured us about numerous federal programs over the decades, especially since the early 1900s with the advent of personal income tax, and later Social Security. No more!

Personally, I advocate providing health care for those who cannot otherwise afford it. Yet, this is best left to family and community action.

We should fiercely contest a federal government plan that has the earmarks of rationing and coldly calculating the worth of a human being. Eventually, sooner rather than later, the so-called health care public option, components of which will no doubt be enshrined as individual rights, will leave even more of our defenseless without choice or life.