In response to the letter from Hallette Salazar of Kingston:

Ms. Salazar’s certainly entitled to her opinion; unfortunately she is citing a (very) erroneous statistic to support its premise.

She states: “Public opinion is at 75 percent for universal health care.” I beg to differ. According to the latest Rasmussen poll on this subject (June 15): “Forty-one percent of American adults believe it would be a good idea to set up a government health insurance company to compete with private health insurance companies. A national telephone survey finds that an identical number disagree.”

At www.pollingreport.com, you can find the following statistics, as of July 13: When asked “Should the primary goal of a national health care overhaul be more to extend health insurance to the millions of Americans who now lack it, or should the primary goal be to rein in the rising costs of health care? If you had to choose one goal over the other, which would you choose?” only 46 percent of respondents state they believe that health insurance should be extended to the “millions” who lack coverage. There are several other questions within that poll, and each show a very measured response by the respondents to the public health care debate. I can find no statistic that shows 75 percent of Americans support “universal health care.”

And thank you, Ms. Salazar, for pointing out that “socialism” already “runs” the Veterans’ Administration, Social Security (expected to be insolvent in less than 30 years according to ABC’s Brian Ross) and the public schools. Any person who has to deal with any one of those entities surely sees and understands the inefficiencies and mediocrities of bloated semi-socialistic bureaucracies. For my health care? No thanks.

Julie Adamen

Poulsbo