Letter to the editor: We must battle ill health as an adversary, too

Walter Williams’ silly “We have no ‘right’ to health care” (March 13, TribLIVE) completely misses the point, besides being extraordinarily ill-timed.

It’s not about “right,” it’s about “how do we want to spend our tax dollars — and would we prefer higher taxes to cover the cost of a universal (more accurately, countrywide ) health care, and other attributes of a civilized society?”

We Americans do not argue against paying taxes for defense against our adversaries. Surely ill health counts among those adversaries, as the coronavirus reminds us. Our government has now committed over $52 billion to combating this challenge. On average, each of us will pay $159 in taxes to cover that cost. But we hear no outcry of resistance to this spending.

It seems that Williams is completely out of touch with what’s going on here.

Tim Price

Jefferson Hills