Early on in the semester, I had decided that I was going to ignore the letters to the editor, because I felt that if I were to respond to them in my unfairly long column, it might hinder the feedback I was getting.

Well, you'll have to excuse me, but I'm going to go ahead and respond this time, though I do appreciate the letters both in the paper and online.

So, to the topic, people have written in with both support and criticism of my last column's subject, the American need for a nationalized single-payer health care system.

I'll forego the support and go straight to the criticism: Canada's health care system isn't perfect.

Well, thanks, I know that and stated that in my last column. I'll remind you that if America were to adopt such a system, it would need to make its own and not adopt another country's health care, otherwise we'll adopt their problems as well.

Canada's health care does have problems. Their supreme court recently issued a ruling that stated there was a lack of equality present in the system.

The wait times can be long. Senior citizens complain about not getting adequate treatment compared to their counterparts in the states.

The real issue isn't about whether we should we adopt Canada's health care system. It's about improving our country and the well-being of all its citizens. Even more, it's about basic human rights and decency.

More than 40 million Americans of our approximate 300 million total population are without any health care whatsoever. The wait times are really long for those 40 million, especially when they're waiting indefinitely.

Tanner Jones, economics senior, wrote that my advocating a nationalized system "reveals the fundamental paradox of leftist thought."

Well, unfortunately, it's quite the other way around.

His right-wing thought in conjunction with economics is sort of an oxymoron. If anyone should be taking a better look at this system, it should be the economists.

Some of the outrageous prices we pay in this country, besides gas and that's for another right-wing white-collar reason, is because companies have skyrocketing employee health care bills to pay.

Last Tuesday, the government stated that within a decade, $1 out of every $5 spent in the U.S. economy will go toward health care, with annual spending consistently growing faster than the overall economy.

Also, Mr. Jones assessed that our terribly unhealthy American lifestyles would greatly affect a nationalized health care system, possibly causing it to buckle under the pressure from all the fat people sitting on it. The only thing that is unhealthy in this country is what we've allowed to exist: a culture of entertainment.

But a lot of people who use the health care system are people who truly need it, fat or not.

If I'm mugged by a guy robbing me in an apartment complex, I don't really feel like I'd be very happy if I got to the hospital, got treated, didn't have medical insurance and had to pay extreme amounts of money for a plight that I didn't ask for.

I indeed found myself in a twilight zone of not having any health care for a month. I was on Tricare as a military dependent and then got married, subsequently removing me from Tricare.

The term for OU's wonderful health care program [laugh] hadn't started yet, and on my honeymoon cruise I got tonsillitis and was sent to the infirmary.

One of my acquaintances, Matt Hawkins, claimed that was irresponsibility on my part. So, for that month gap, I'm not sure what I could have done better.

My wife works for OU, so obviously I'm going to go with an OU plan. But if OU goes from spring to summer terms, I get married in May and the summer term doesn't start until June, what would I do?

A Canadian doctor at the infirmary on the cruise ship told me an option: We should get the government to get us a nationalized health care system. Irony at its best. It was especially nice using our wedding money to pay for a $1,500 medical bill.

Bottom line is that s--- happens. Sometimes we have to go to the hospital. We're human beings in the best country in the world, shouldn't that come with an entitlement health care system that allows all equally created human beings medical treatment?

"Health care is an essential safeguard of human life and dignity, and there is an obligation for society to ensure that every person be able to realize this right." -- Cardinal Joseph Bernardin.

-- Joseph Proffer is a criminology junior. His column appears every other Tuesday, and he can be reached at opinion@oudaily.com.

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