Tom Licata’s letter to the editor “Say no to more government ,” (Burlington Free Press, Oct. 15) states that “Government controlled single-payer health care violates both your sovereign and natural rights.”
This statement completely ignores that we the people are the government.
While this is often difficult to grasp in how our government, especially our seemingly federal corporatocracy, functions (with a certain party consciously trying to destroy our government) it is also true.
If we the people are the government, how can it be “collective submission,” as Mr. Licata said, for a single-payer system enacted through our representative bodies we elect through our constitutional right to vote?
If we want single-payer this is our natural and sovereign right.
Mr. Licata suggests that progressivism is “Men as communities are supreme over men as individuals.” This is incorrect.
Progressivism believes communities are composed of individuals. An individual’s needs are also the community’s needs. Health care is a community endeavor between individuals; a patient does not have “liberty,” when needing medical practitioners to live. Having been in this situation, I know this well.
A physician is not someone “whose property is found in your labor,” as Mr. Licata said, but as someone who helps others in need — a communal endeavor.
Free market health care has failed. It has not met our needs.
Our grim health statistics prove this fact. It is long past time for us, the people, to install our own natural and sovereign right to universal health care.
Walter Carpenter
Montpelier