The health-care issue is not a matter of religious preference – forcing people who go to a church that does not believe in medical care to buy insurance; it is a public-health issue that is also a matter of vital national security. The rest of the population becomes at risk by coming in contact with a devout church-goer who is carrying a lethal infectious disease. There is a resurgence of pertussis (whooping cough) right here in Colorado, with more than 1,000 cases diagnosed within the past year or so. Pertussis can be fatal to infants!

We need health-care legislation – particularly legislation to protect pregnant women and children. In Dark Ages Europe, bubonic plague wiped out most of the population, and it didn’t care how much money they had in the bank. If you caught it, you were dead. Our civilization has made great strides in disease prevention over the past 50 years. Polio is wiped out. Mumps, measles and rubella are wiped out. Smallpox and chicken pox are virtually wiped out. There is now even a vaccine for meningitis.

Unfortunately, any and all these diseases can make a comeback. Pertussis already has. This time, they won’t be as easy to fight or control. As a nation, we need to consider public health a national-security issue, along with terrorism. It is stupid for us to go back to the 1950s when people died or became permanently disabled from diseases we can prevent now with just a shot in the arm.

Please contact your congressman or senator and tell them to kill the religious exemption to the Affordable Care Act.

Yasmina Mickas

Ignacio