I’d like to thank U.S. Reps. Chellie Pingree and Mike Michaud for voting for the health care bill.

Recently, I saw another television advertisement attacking Michaud, and it is wrong when it says Michaud is pleasing Washington, D.C., instead of constituents in Maine. He did listen to his constituents. I know, because he listened to me. I was calling and writing to him, asking him to support health care reform, and he did.

I’ve read that lobbyists at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington are behind those ads. The chamber’s attack ads misrepresent the cost of the bill with funny math by counting tax cuts and fines paid by companies that refuse to obey the law. The ads claim “over $572 billion in new taxes,” but The Associated Press, in an article published Nov. 2, finds middle-class families and small businesses will pay no new taxes. The only people paying new taxes are the ones making more than $500,000 a year, but they use that to try to scare regular people about it.

Health care decisions should not be made by insurance companies that are protecting their profits. Health care should be as universal as fire and police coverage. What is wrong with that? I heard Wanda Sykes’ tell a joke that was seriously right: Imagine your house on fire and fire department officials said, “Let’s check your deductible first. OK, we’ll just let the living room burn out.”

Brenda Akers, Lewiston