Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

To the Editor:

Re “Mexico Struggles to Realize the Promise of Universal Health Care” (news article, Jan. 30):

Now finalizing six years of effort, by September Mexico will have managed to enroll 51 million poor people in a government-sponsored health insurance program, effectively creating a universal health plan. As a result, lives have already been saved, cancers treated, cataracts removed, H.I.V. medicated and babies cared for.

Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Representative Paul Ryan and all your Republican comrades, so eager to deny uninsured Americans decent health care: if our far less affluent neighbors to the south can afford health care for all, why can’t the most affluent nation in the world?

Arthur L. Yeager
Edison, N.J., Jan. 30, 2011

Note from KBJ: The letter writer is either stupid or dishonest. Nobody is "eager to deny uninsured Americans decent health care." Many of us are eager to avoid bankrupting this country. And the question isn't whether the United States can afford "health care for all." Obviously, we can, just as we can afford Hummers and big-screen televisions for all. The question is whether universal coverage is worth the terrible cost in individual liberty.