In response to “American Dependence Day: Nationalizing health care is not the answer,” by Thomas Cloud, July 8:

I am happy to hear that Mr. Cloud has the resources to afford private, bi-weekly MRIs. As for the rest of us — those with less economically well-endowed fathers — we’d like to be able to visit the doctor without incurring debt equivalent to the value of the summer dacha that belongs to Mr. Cloud’s patron.

Health care for all citizens is a humane advance that every first world country has taken, with one notable exception. Nonetheless, dealing with this issue is not as logical as Mr. Cloud might suppose. He may enjoy an NPR series that looks at the differences between universal health-care systems in five European countries (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106181899). This series investigates the strengths and weaknesses of the health-care systems of Britain, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Germany. It takes an articulated look at a complicated issue, which might be contrasted with Mr. Cloud’s off-the-cuff caricatures.

Finally, the editor at The Daily might want to take a closer look at the prose that is published in the opinion pages. This is a direct quote from the column:

“To borrow the words of my father, this is the age of the politics of envy. Take nationalizing health care, for instance. It is extremely obvious that this will contribute to stagnation in our quality of life. If the empirical evidence is not enough for you, take a basic microeconomics class.”

Beyond the repeated use of “this” in the same paragraph with multiple antecedents, Mr. Cloud and his supervisors are obliged to acknowledge that neither the opinion of his father, nor his qualifying assertions as to what is “extremely obvious” constitute empirical evidence.

Perhaps Mr. Cloud wishes to assert that such evidence can be encountered in the microeconomics class that he recommends. While he is here at the University of Washington, he might also enjoy a sociology class that will present him with facts about rising poverty and the escalating cost of health care. Or, if he still finds himself hungry for empirical results, he could say “no thanks” to daddy’s money and see how he does without the personal “nanny-state” that he currently enjoys.

Joshua Crowgey

Graduate student

Linguistics