Reader: Health care needs are basic tenet of religion



In the protection of special interest groups, we forget our own personal interest and we forget our humanity, and to steal a line from others — “we forget our Christian heritage.”

Arguments against health care change by individuals have been as follows: 1. I won’t be able to choose my own doctor; 2. my doctor will have to follow government guidelines; and 3. I will have to sign papers about euthanasia.

Those arguments are moot.

Currently, the largest portion of insurers let you choose from a “group” of doctors. Outside that list of doctors, you pay in some form.

Guidelines for services and tests doctors perform and where they are performed are limited by insurance companies. The doctors do not make a large part of your medical decisions, your insurer does.

Anyone admitted to any hospital in the last 20 years already knows the patient signs forms, or the guardian, as to whether or not you have an end-of-life form, or medical directions in case of complications, such as “do not resuscitate,” or whatever else you may choose. In other words, not the government, but the insurers already control the areas we most fear.

In taking up for the status quo, we protect the interest of the insurance companies, not our own interests. Defending insurance companies interests over self-interest flies in the face of all natural instincts of self-preservation. Our current system of health care not only hurts our country’s productivity and economy, it is inhumane and does not reflect this country’s Christian heritage.

So take care of those who are deprived, who have basic life needs is the basic tenet of Jewish, Christian and Islamic religions. If with scissors you cut out every verse that has anything to do with taking care of others, you would cut out and lose almost 50 percent of the Christian Bible. Check out the 25th chapter of Matthew: “If you did not do it to the least of these people, you did not do it for me” — Jesus, Matthew 25: 31-46.

Let’s live up to our old Christian heritage. Let’s live up to the new Islamic and Buddhist heritage. Let’s live up to the compassion of all of our heritages. Peace!

— Steven A. Fetter, Jeffersonville





An open letter

to Sen. Evan Bayh



Dear Sen. Bayh, I am looking at an old Christmas card your parents sent my parents sometime during the early 1960s. On the card’s front, your beaming parents, Sen. Birch Bayh and Marvella Bayh, stand at your side as you sit at a piano, shyly looking at the camera.

It is a sweet reminder of the innocent days when you were in a Washington, D.C., grammar school and I was about the same age living on a west-central Indiana farm.

My parents saved that card and many others like it because they were proud of their association with your family. They helped launch your father’s 1962 successful U.S. Senate campaign by serving as precinct committeeman and woman. They delivered the vote for your dad.

Later, when the time came, others in our family and thousands of Indiana families helped deliver the vote or you. As the son of Sen. Birch Bayh, and as your own man, you have been the beneficiary of our hard work for many, many years. All these good Hoosiers helped establish the Bayh name as a powerhouse in Indiana politics.

I imagine my parents saved these mementos for another reason. You see, these cards and invitations are evidence of a political pact, an agreement that simply states: “We will help you get elected, if you will answer our call when we need help.”

Sen. Bayh, we are calling you to help us now. It is time for you to ante up and honor your commitment to us. We need you to support a public option health care plan that will lift the terrible burden of fear off the shoulders of all Americans.

That fear is one of sickness. That fear is one of bankruptcy. That fear is one of homelessness. Thousands and thousands of us are one illness away from these tragedies. Millions of Americans are living this nightmare. Way too many have already been crushed. You see, senator, this is personal. Life and death, in fact.

Can you imagine the relief, gratitude and loyalty we would feel toward you if you helped us get the same health care coverage you have? If you did that, no amount of political marketing by the opposition could ever sway our votes away from you. Let the opposition spend their millions and millions of dollars to no avail. Families saved from those kinds of catastrophe are forever beholding and true. Witness FDR’s legacy.

Sen. Bayh, I am sending you this Christmas card. Would you be so kind as to autograph it and mail it back to me? I would like to frame it and hang it on our family’s farmhouse wall. I’d like to add a sentence at the bottom of the card that goes like this, “Sen. Evan Bayh kept his family’s promise to all our families.”

— Dotti Hedrick, Bloomington