I’ve just read a powerful op-ed piece in the Arizona Daily Star in support of the President’s program of health care reform. It’s a good, strong piece full of passionate thinking and based in personal experience. The writer is Sarah Garrecht Gassen, the daughter of a friend and co-parishioner here in St. Louis. The heart of it is the author’s experience trying to find health insurance in light of the fact that she has used a prosthetic leg since she was three years old.

Gassen’s concern in this piece is primarily with reform of the insurance system, particularly with changing the familiar practice of denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions; though her anger with people who are willing to ignore “the failings of our existing health-care system because someone somewhere told them President Obama is a socialist or some such nonsense” extends beyond that one set of issues. I had thought this was relatively safe territory, believing that the clear middle-class interest in insurance reform would ensure the success of this part of the President’s program. But I fear I was wrong.

The comment thread following Gassen’s piece is filled with attacks on her and her ideas. Many of them are just flaming, but not all. One merely observes sarcastically,

Sorry about your leg Sarah. I had a similar problem when I tried to get auto insurance the day after I wrecked my car.

Damn insurance companies.

Here’s another, this one a serious ad hominem:

Sarah is a liberal journalist with no background or expertise in health care. Yet she has the pulpit and the ink to spew her opinions. She is so biased her pieces abound in poor judgement, but she can’t really help herself. This is what is frightening about these people. Be afraid, be very afraid.

But the most dismaying comment comes from a person who speaks without apparent malice—I give it entire.

I am very sorry for your prosthetic leg situation.

However, I am tired of people such as myself on the right being accused of fear mongering.

If you want truth, the truth is much of what you hear from the right is the end result of much thought about how a government health care system will affect the country. We are not stupid as some might think and we have the right to our opinions just as much as any person on the left. I may not agree with the left, but I don’t accuse them of being non-thinkers.

Another thing I am tired of is that people with extraordinary needs are being used to set the precedent for why we need nationalized health care.

Truth be told, those people are a small percentage and I don’t think it is right to turn the entire health care system over onto its’ belly because of the few.

I have concern about the ever-increasing “me me me” mentality in this country…”the government should pay for this, the government should pay for that.” To heck with the entitlement mentality.

Finally, there are a number of very charitable organizations from churches to doctors and hospitals whose sole purpose is to assist those who need it

It’s been my thought that the struggle for consensus on health care involved persuading independent voters, those who voted for Obama in the general election because of perceived economic interest, that health care reform would benefit them, particularly that requiring insurance companies to cover everyone for a reasonable cost would benefit them.

It’s this thought that I am re-examining. I have no idea how representative the comments to Sarah Gassen’s op-ed may be of the opposition to health care reform, but if they are broadly representative I’m more worried than I was. When people who seem rational can characterize their fellow citizens who would simply like to be able to buy health insurance for a reasonable cost and be covered for their pre-existing conditions, as deadbeats possessed of an entitlement mentality, we’ve hit a new low, indeed.