The perpetual parent

Christopher Lawrence writes (July 28), “Any fear you may have of our government doing a worse job of serving our health needs than the insurance companies are now doing is irrelevant. This is what the majority of the American people want. We want it now!”

Where did you ever get the idea, Christopher, that your fellow citizens are responsible for your health care? Let me guess, you were raised in the post-constitutional era (i.e., the post-Roosevelt era) and educated in government-run schools. Hence your understanding of the role of government is that it is your perpetual parent, charged with feeding, housing, transporting, educating and nursing all its spoiled children. And, of course, if it does not come running with a Band-Aid and an ice cream cone when you skin your knee, you’ll stamp your feet and hold your breath until you turn blue.

Go to your room, Christopher, and write on your blackboard 1,000 times, “My life is my responsibility, and no one else’s.” When you finish with that, you might try writing a letter to your congressman demanding that the government repeal all the mandates, edicts, restrictions and free-lunch schemes that beset the health care, health insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Then maybe you could afford their products and services.

G.E. Morton

Spokane