Tax-paying Sikhs have every right to use the health-care system

You never hear them complain about others whose choices may not be the healthiest

There seems to be an odd perception out there that only Caucasians pay taxes and that minorities get a free ride on those taxes.

How else to explain the views of a letter writer this week who complained that if Sikhs don’t wear helmets when riding motorcycles, and they are injured, their choice “impacts on taxpayer-funded health care?”

The writer appears to be unaware that Sikhs are taxpayers, too.

And according to www.sikhs. org, “a Sikh must not take hemp (cannabis), opium, liquor, tobacco, in short any intoxicant.”

This means that the taxes Sikhs pay into the health-care system are spent on treating non- Sikhs who indulge in liquor, tobacco and drugs, resulting in cirrhosis, lung cancer, heart disease, stroke, overdoses and the like. Further, Sikhs are vegetarians, so their taxes also go to care for non- Sikhs whose western dietary habits are linked to such things as Type 2 diabetes.

Yet, you never hear Sikhs complaining about their tax money being used to pay for the ills of the majority in Canadian society. Maybe that’s because, according to www.thoughtco.com, one of the 11 virtues Sikhs strive toward is: “Respect the equal rights of all other people, regardless of their rank, gender, caste, class, colour or creed.”

The letter writer, however, says that if “someone wants to ride a motorcycle and not wear a helmet, perhaps they should be required to opt out of taxpayerfunded services such as health care, ambulance service, etc.”

It almost sounds as if the writer is advocating for a helmetless Sikh who is injured in a motorcycle accident to be left to die by the side of the road.

First, ambulance service is not wholly taxpayer funded. As anyone who has ever called an ambulance knows, a hefty bill arrives in the mail even before you’ve got your stitches out.

And what about this peculiar oxymoronic phrase: “required to opt out?” Since “opt” means choice and “required” means mandatory, the writer is actually calling for Sikhs who don’t wear helmets to be forced out of the health-care system.

But if they were forced out, would they be allowed back in for, say, appendicitis, since that’s not related to helmets?

Following this logic, anyone who drives drunk and injures themselves in a collision should also be “required to opt out.” So should someone whose cigarette habit results in lung cancer, emphysema, stroke or heart disease.

These are all things that result from choices.

Our health-care system would be reduced to a ludicrous jumble of religious and racial prejudice, finger-pointing and insane attempts to parse the origins of someone’s illness.

This would result in care for the identical illness being funded for one person, but not for another.

Do you smoke and drink? Well, you and your heart attack will have to opt out of the health-care system.

But then the guy in the next bed over in the ER has no apparent causative factors, so the health-care system will gladly pay for treating his heart attack.

The letter writer signs off with the complaint that “governments are going way too far in changing the rules to suit minorities.” Yet, he implies that the rules of the Canada Health Act should be changed to discriminate against minorities by refusing to treat them.

This issue does not originate with motorcycle helmets. It surfaced some years ago when bicycle helmet laws were a hot topic and people said that bicycle-riding Sikhs should pay for their own medical care in case of an accident.

We all do things that could land us in the hospital. We also all pay taxes into the health-care system so that it will be there for us when we need it, regardless of why we need it.

Sikhs are taxpayers, too. Their dollars fund the health-care system, the same as anyone else’s, and they have a right to use it for whatever ails them, just as we all do.