The first thing a high school junior learns in a required economics class is the acronym TINSTAAFL — There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

Someone has to pay for the benefits the government gives you.

If the public health option is passed by Congress, no one will get the free lunch promised by President Obama and those in Congress. There will be rationed health care and age discrimination in health care. “Pull the plug on granny, let her die! I want my health care now!” We will all pay much more for health care, and we all must join the program or pay a fine of up to $1,500 each year. This will be the ruination of America.

The 1,990-page bill could never be totally understood by anyone, and that is the point. If it cannot be summarized in 10 pages or less, then we are all being flim-flammed, lied to, cheated, betrayed and giving up our right to object over taxation without representation!

The public option means that the federal government will take over the health care industry like it did the banking industry and the auto industry. The health care industry alone is one-sixth, or 16 2/3 percent, of our $14.4 trillion gross domestic product — GDP.

GDP is every citizen’s gross domestic production for one year, which is $2,390,000,000,000.00 (two trillion, three hundred ninety billion dollars).

Vote the current representatives and senators out of Congress, and start over with term limits for all members! It is time for a tea party like the original tea party in Boston when our forefathers threw the English tea in the water in protest over taxation without representation! If this public option is passed allowing the federal government to take over the health care industry, the United States will be changed forever for the worse. This will be a sea change in our form of government. It will stifle entrepreneurship, which is the linchpin of the free-market system in our country. Why destroy a health care system that is working when all it needs is reform?

Jerry O. Penniston

Ottumwa