What is Kinder doing to help?

Open letter to Peter Kinder: You have been quite vocal lately, first critical of U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill and now of Gov. Jay Nixon. You use words like "federal health care takeover" and "social experiment" for the Democrats' health care reform. You are using the same wording as the mostly ill-informed tea party people. Is this the company you're courting as you prepare to run for governor in 2012?

And what, may I ask, are you proposing to help Missourians who are paying way too much to corrupt health insurance companies? As the top elected Republican official, did you do anything to help Governor Nixon pass a health plan, which was supported by the Missouri Hospitals Association and which would have covered 30,000 more of our most vulnerable citizens? If you did anything, we didn't see it. Just as we didn't see you do anything when Gov. Matt Blunt savagely removed at least 70,000 people from Medicaid coverage in 2005.

You seem to have plenty of time in your job as lieutenant governor to write self-righteous, self-promoting letters to media, which are meant to embarrass officials from other parties. Yet we have seen far more effort from McCaskill and Nixon than we have from you. How about working instead for universal coverage, which the majority of U.S. citizens want and which costs less than most people's health plans and which covers more medical services than most of our coverage?

JOHN HELLER, Columbia, Mo.