The author of "Health care deficiencies real" (letter, Oct. 28) makes a serious error when he criticizes the author of a previous letter ("It’s an individual ‘responsibility,’" Oct. 26) as enjoying the luxury of "free" health care, and therefore implies has no right to question the need for health coverage for all citizens.

Correction: No one in the military is receiving "free" health care. They are working for it and earning it as part of their employer’s total compensation package. Most civilian companies of any size do the same — offer a salary and an array of "benefits" to include some sort of health care coverage or offering. Some are better than what the military offers. Some are not. If anyone separates from the military in a nonretirement status, they lose their so-called "free" health care.

The previous author was right — health care is an individual responsibility, just as one’s retirement is; the type and quality of one’s housing; the type of car (if any) one chooses to own, lease or drive; the food one eats; vacations one takes — all are an individual responsibility to provide for themselves based on their own desires and what they choose to work/pay for. Some basic, bottom-floor government programs to temporarily assist the truly needy are not inappropriate and currently exist. True, our health care system could use a little tweaking and improvement, but certainly not to the massive intrusiveness that most of the proposed bills have been advocating. Much of that seems to be a prescription for disaster, as most big government intrusiveness into the private sector is.

Let’s hear more from small government/fiscal conservative advocates. Our government is ballooning out of control and can’t even pay for itself now, creating unsustainable debt and heading fast toward bankruptcy. Do we really need more of that?

Matthew BrandstetterStuttgart, Germany