In response to Nancy Overgaard’s editorial on health care reform, I have a number of counterarguments.

1. Being against national health reform won’t necessarily prevent a person from being “complicit in killing the unborn” as she claims.

About half of private health insurance plans provide at least some coverage for abortions. My Blue Cross/Blue Shield plan covers medically necessary abortions. I pray I never have a health crisis that would lead me to consider having one, but, personally, I’m glad my insurance would help me if I were faced with such tragic circumstances.

2. There are lots of other ways that we are complicit in killing innocent people. Our military action in Iraq has caused the violent deaths of, depending on the source, at least 90,000 civilians overall (Iraq Body Count) or 104,000 in the first three years after the U.S.-led invasion alone (World Health Organization). This does not count the suffering of those who are merely mutilated. What has paid for that human slaughter?

U.S. tax dollars.

3. We are complicit in killing innocent children in far more banal ways as consumers. My addictions to sugar, coffee and oil have most likely indirectly led to the deaths of children in places where people have been dispossessed from farm land due to plantations and drilling. But their suffering and death, a world away, is hidden.

4. If we oppose health care reform, we are complicit in the deaths of children in the U.S. Our system is so broken that our infant mortality rate is ranked 30th, on par with Serbia (source: Save the Children). Our system is plenty advanced, but it is not equally distributed. A baby born in the U.S. has a 1 in 125 chance of dying before the age of 5, twice the rate of Sweden. For the sake of argument, let’s say that Albert Lea is close to the U.S. average (hopefully, we are actually better) and 250 babies were born in Albert Lea this year (this is close to accurate; there were 361 babies born in the county in 2007). Two would be expected to die before age 5 compared to one in Sweden. Over a span of years, that would be a difference of about one child lost in every grade level in our public school system. Sweden, like most industrialized countries, has universal health coverage, and it saves the lives of babies and toddlers by giving everybody access.

5. Finally, I have an economic argument for supporting reform. Our current health care system cost us $2.2 trillion dollars in 2007 (source: Kaiser Family Foundation). That is about $30,000 annually for a family of four, and it’s growing at a faster rate than inflation and wage increases. Our future economic stability depends on controlling these costs, and economic stability saves lives and reduces the number of abortions.

Jennifer Vogt-Erickson

Albert Lea