Editor:

As House Bill 3200, America's Affordable Health Care Act of 2009, moves through that democratic process of establishing new laws, it is important to sort out the disinformation against it. The campaign against health care reform seems to rely on two basic principles. The first is the belief that most Americans believe only the people who scare them; hence, the deluge of claims of "...unconstitutional, disappearance of private sector insurance companies, rationing of health care, undermining the Bill of Rights, death panels, etc." A list carefully crafted to scare Americans into believing that health care reform would be catastrophic to the American way of life.

The second principle at work in this campaign of disinformation seems to be the idea that if we can be led to hate those who propose change, it becomes easier to block change and to stifle hope. If promoting hatred is not the goal, how else does one explain references to swastikas, Nazis, Czars, death panels, and comparisons of President Barack Obama to Hitler?

In actuality, Sec. 242 of HB 3200 specifically excludes illegal immigrants from government-funded health care. Both the Hyde amendment, and the Capps amendment prohibit federal funding of abortion services. HB 3200 encourages healthy competition among private insurance companies. It takes time, but one can become informed, and not misinformed or misled.

A partial list of things HB 3200 proposes to do:

1. Prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.

2. Make health insurance affordable for millions of Americans who cannot now afford it.

3. Expand Medicaid so that health care would be free for the very poorest of our society, especially children.

4. Stop insurance companies from cherry-picking healthy patients for highly profitable groups and stop them from discriminating against the sick and the aged.

5. Do away with arbitrary lifetime dollar amounts.

The operant question is "Does our morality as a Christian nation, which we profess to be, require us to make health care affordable for all our citizens?"

As long as the debate is founded in honesty, and does not rely on the politics of fear and hatred, nothing could better promote the ideals of a representative democracy. In closing, who benefits the most from maintaining the status quo?

SIMON LOZANO, Torrington