To the editor:

A balmy evening, perfect for watching cats playing while I swing in the porch swing. This moment of calm is a soothing reprieve from the current news of our representatives in Washington, D.C. debating the health care bill.

I fervently believe our representatives should be educated for six days by experts, workers, in any field that requires their vote to approve government spending.

Perhaps going with a visiting nurse to a home of a hemiplegic living in a shed with a dirt floor to dress a wound at the base of his spine opened to the bone and wider than a fist, after an accident in his youth; then with the nurse to a luxury apartment of a wealthy patron for instruction in steroid self-injection; or to a laboratory with rows of vials of blood from persons who died of drug overdoses; to a lonely trailer to visit a young mother with a new baby; to a senior center to teach a gentle yoga class; or to a hospital delivering meals to homebound persons.

This last program has been canceled locally, I understand. Who feels homebound ill now? How is that program not a necessary one to maintain health for those ill homebound?

Health maintenance programs should be studied and funded when found effective.

Other than personal life experiences, what makes those elected qualified to make informed decisions?

How can we count on them to fairly represent us if even they cannot evaluate what happens when money is drastically cut?

Nancy Wolter

Seymour