Two Good LTEs in Colorado Springs Gazette

The February 13, 2008 Colorado Springs Gazette has printed two good LTE's on the issue of health care reform:

'Right' to care requires someone to provide it

In Sunday's Letters section, Phil Stahl stated that health care should be a right ("Government needed to prevent abuse of system"). Health care is nothing more or less then the services and goods produced by hard-working people. I am certain Stahl did not mean to imply that these people give away their labor without compensation.

If that compensation does not come from the person receiving the goods or service, then it must come from someone else. And that can only happen through voluntary or involuntary means. If it happens through involuntary means, then the threat of force and violence must be used. Rights that we all believe in and cherish such as speech and privacy do not involve taking anything away from someone else. If something you think of as a right can only be obtained by forcibly taking it from others, then it is probably not a right.

Steve Reinschmidt
Colorado Springs

Canada's system fails to provide proper care

Phil Stahl talks of how good the Canadian health system is in his letter. I suggest he visit www.freemarketcure.com/brainsurgery.php and view the 2006 video of an Ontario male with brain cancer.

For people who do not have Internet access, I'll provide a summary: the patient was going to have a four-month wait just to get a validating MRI and upward of an eight-month wait for the surgery under the Canadian health system.

Medical authorities said he would not survive the wait, so he went to Buffalo, N.Y., got the MRI and had surgery done in less than five weeks.

Due to the medical emergency, he asked for reimbursement of the $28K surgery cost from the Canadian government and was turned down.

John R. Tucker
Colorado Springs

Thanks to the Gazette for printing both of those letters.