I have a good friend who once told me he didn’t believe health care is a “right.” Well, I agree with him. It isn’t a right; it is a necessity.

One of my relatives is several years younger than her husband, and when he retired she was left without health insurance since her job did not offer it to part-time employees. Fortunately, that was back when we had Dirigo, and she was able to get a subsidized plan, which was a lifesaver when she was diagnosed with cancer. Would she have had that mammogram without health insurance? Would she be alive today?

Almost everyone of us will need health care at some point in our lives, and almost none of us can predict when that will be.

I do not understand for the life of me why some folks continue to believe that only some of us deserve health care and others are somehow not worthy, that they will have to count on only emergency care which, by the way, the rest of us pay for anyway at a higher cost.

Our country can afford tax cuts for the wealthy, huge tax subsidies to corporations and gigantic sums to go to war, but we can’t afford to care for the health of our own citizens?

Sylvia OuelletteManchester