You know better, Rep. Biggert

I have a great health care plan. It lets me go to any doctor I choose. I don't have to get preapproval for medical procedures, co-pays are not eating up my income, my monthly premiums are very reasonable and I have never had to wait for my care. Oh, and it's a government-sponsored, single-payer plan.

It's called Medicare. I love it, and I have never heard any of my friends say otherwise. Yes, I know Medicare is running out of money. Taxpayers contribute less than 1.5 percent of their earned income (not pension or investment income) to support the system, which covers an aging population. But the high cost of private insurance is bankrupting our economy, has destroyed the auto industry, while providing far less than the best health care in the world.

Every day, out-of-work families have to ignore their symptoms until they are bad enough to justify a trip the emergency room, where they are treated by a doctor who has never seen them before.

Being the beneficiary of such injustice troubles me. How can the richest nation on earth cannot provide basic medical care for its people. Finally we have a government that understands the basic immorality of this of this system and seeks to do better. It is not an easy fight. Health care is very personal and complex. And into this important debate comes U.S. Rep. Judy Biggert - well-educated and a recipient of a first-rate medical plan - distributing a brochure opposing reform of our unjust system and claiming that the proposed plan would require "end of life counseling for seniors that might encourage them to give up when facing serious illness." She has conceded the statement was "a little inflammatory" and that she "probably wrote it when she was mad."

Representative Biggert, you know better; we deserve better.

Carole Kerr

Naperville