Sounding Off:

It is always amazing how ill-informed a great many citizens are of just how their government works. True, they have a powerful tool in their vote, but how they choose to use that is often left to emotional — not factual — reason. The debate and anxiety over health-care reform is a very emotional one and impinges on financial concerns as well.

Although the so-called bill is more than 1,000 pages long, and complex and open to legalese, it still comes down to a government takeover with dictatorial rules to doctors and caregivers.

The prospect of a health commissioner and various czars who are unelected and unvetted persons making all our decisions is more than a little troubling. The fact is that people from all over the world come to the United States for their health care. They don’t go to Cuba.

Some reasons we have the highest level of spending for health care are because of research costs in addition to the number of tests doctors perform to avoid lawsuits. There are ways to manage costs for health-care reform, but the heavy hand of government does nothing to stimulate innovation.

Many citizens who are protesting government takeover of banks, autos, manufacturing and now health have actually lived through such regimes and know how this type of control has affected their lives.

The time to weigh in on the “proposals” is before they are written in stone and signed into law — not afterward.

MARY DEININGER is a Newport Beach resident.