No bailouts for poor choices

So many words are flying around about health care. How is America going to cover the medical costs for everybody? How can our health care providers and institutions manage to take care of everybody?

Joe Biden said recently, “What more can we do to provide health care to everybody?” The answer is America cannot, nor should we.

Our country was founded on the idea of a free people who could choose for themselves, and take care of themselves. If people will not take care of themselves, and have enormous health problems because of horrible life choices, then I do not agree that, even as a Christian nation, we must bankrupt ourselves to pay to take care of them.

I’m certainly not talking about babies, accidents, bona-fide emergencies or age-related issues.

I’m talking about the problems associated with obesity, smoking, drinking, drug use and reckless behavior. If people choose that lifestyle, then they choose the consequences, too. And let them live with those consequences.

Still buying cigarettes, Twinkies, beer and meth? Then, dear people, live with the consequences of those choices, and do not expect to be saved by the rest of us from the consequences of those poor choices.

Donna Potter Phillips

Spokane