Who gets to decide the 'worth of life?'

After reading the Cal Thomas column on Aug. 4th, I felt I had to respond.

Thomas is worried about the "worth of life," if left to the government. His issue is a 53-year-old man who has prostate cancer and is uninsured. His life is in jeopardy since the state that he lives in refuses to pay for treatment for his cancer and would offer him assisted suicide instead.

Cal Thomas is upset with that, and it seemed to me that he then intended to write about the unfortunate 47 million Americans without insurance, or perhaps about the morality of assisted suicide.

However, Cal Thomas instead chose to deliver a cheap shot to the Democratic platform for national health care.

Cal Thomas decries "having a government bureaucrat or panel of 'experts' play God and decide, based on cost alone, when your or my life no longer has value in the eyes of the state."

Isn't this exactly what happens when your insurance company denies you a test or a treatment or a medicine prescribed by your doctor because "it is too expensive?"

Isn't that also what happens when an insurance company decides that you have a "pre-existing condition" that they can exclude treatment for?

If expense is the only criteria in health care, what does that say about us as a society?

As most of us know, this country has at least 47 million Americans who are uninsured. That is a travesty considering that we still remain the richest and most powerful nation in the world.

We pay more for our health care and receive less for our dollars than most other nations in the world.

Yet, we cling to that expensive, discriminatory, and arbitrary system because the conservatives would have us believe that anything else will result in that terrible entity called "socialized medicine."

The Democrats propose no such thing. They believe Americans deserve a comprehensive health care for life, with no exceptions and no exclusions, preferably administered by a not-for-profit organization in a shared pool.

It should be the right of every American citizen to expect adequate and affordable health care.

Judy Arenas

Arlington Heights