To the Editor:
Re “In
Ohio, Obama Makes a Working-Class Appeal for Health Care Votes”
(news article, March 16):
President Obama is resorting to Natoma
Canfield’s sad story and saying that “every argument has been made”
because he has not answered so many
arguments against his plan. How, for example, when an insurance mandate
has failed spectacularly in Massachusetts, will it work times 50?
I,
too, feel sorry for Ms. Canfield, an uninsured woman with leukemia. But
that does not justify brushing aside the facts and increasing
government intervention in health care.
In fact, it is government
intervention that places individually purchased insurance out of Ms.
Canfield’s price range in the first place.
Feelings of pity,
however strong, must not get in the way of a reasoned debate. The only
way to help Ms. Canfield and other Americans get health care is a fully
free market.
Stella Zawistowski
New York, March 16, 2010
Note from KBJ: Hard cases make bad law.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 