Angle ignorant on plight of disabled

Kathleen Kenna, Las Vegas

Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2010 | 2:04 a.m.

Thanks to the Las Vegas Sun for its excellent Sept. 27 editorial, “Extremism personified.”

Republican Senate nominee Sharron Angle’s comments about autism show a callous disregard for families that fought so long to get big insurance to cover therapy for children with autism, and it shows true ignorance about the nature of health insurance.

“You’re paying for things you don’t even need,” Ms. Angle complains.

Really? I thought that was why we all needed health insurance — for the things we don’t need and pray we will never need.

I trained to become a rehabilitation counselor in midlife, after being disabled due to grievous injuries in the Afghanistan war. (Don’t worry, Ms. Angle, it didn’t cost American taxpayers a penny.) I work with people of all disabilities, and took an oath to be an advocate for people with disabilities.

Ms. Angle has insulted the jobless for being “spoiled”; claims people are without work because they won’t take menial jobs (without any proof in the state with the country’s worst unemployment); and now she attacks children with autism?

Shame on her.

One in five Americans has a disability, and many of us are rejected for health insurance because of pre-existing conditions, even though we stay healthy and don’t have high health care costs. That’s why this country needed health care reform: to protect the vulnerable from the greed of big insurance and the ignorance of those fortunate enough to have health insurance (but so uncaring as to deny similar care to others).

And that’s why we, the people with disabilities, need to set people like Ms. Angle straight about her sad misconceptions. Her attitude isn’t just “extremism,” as your editorial so wisely noted. It’s also hurtful and vengeful, and typical of the ugly “us versus them” so common in the debased language of the current election campaign.