Last week, Lori Moreth stated in a column that "health care wasn’t important to the American people." Of course, anyone who hasn’t been under a rock for the past few months knows that this is the farthest thing from the truth. If health care wasn’t important to us, then why has everyone in this country been talking about it almost non-stop for the past few months?

Whether or not you agree with the president’s health care plan, you can’t deny that it is an extremely vital part of American society. If it wasn’t important, no one would be fiercely defending their stance on how the health care system should operate. If it wasn’t important to us, then why would Ms. Moreth have to write a column about it? Since health care doesn’t matter, there must not be that much to say about it right?

But of course, there’s more than plenty to say about it. While Obama’s health care plan isn’t a sure thing, it is definitely a necessary one. As a member of a family that has been screwed over again and again by health care providers, we need to change how we operate. Health care should be a right, not a privilege. There are those who want to brand the plan as "socialist," even though since it is a government option that would create competition among the other providers, it is as capitalist as things get. I know I’ve said this before, but if you hate socialism so much, don’t go to public schools or collect unemployment when you lose your job, because those are comparable services provided by the government that are funded by the American taxpayer.

But the main point of this article isn’t where I stand on this issue. It’s how people are improperly defending those stances by buying into lies and propaganda. Both sides of the debate are guilty here. The right is manipulating the language of the health care bill and throwing in their own conspiracy theories and the left isn’t doing enough to disprove these lies. I know Ms. Moreth said that the language of the health care bill was unclear, but I’ve read some passages of it, and I found it quite easy to understand. I understood that immigrants won’t be covered. I understood that there are no death panels and that end-of-life counseling was removed from the bill (caving we can believe in!). But Obama and his crew are also making some dubious claims about just how much the bill is going to cost and how much it will add to the deficit.

I’m sick of all the misinformation. We can’t have an honest debate about health care if nobody knows what they’re talking about. But the key to a lot of it is the fact that a lot of people just blindly follow those that they agree with. I still strongly support Obama, but I disagree with him on gay marriage, the "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy, and how he and Eric Holder are dragging their feet on prosecuting torture. But others aren’t so objective. For example, when Glenn Beck made his infamous "Obama is a racist" comment, a lot of people just nodded in agreement to what he said. They were so happy that someone on TV held the same principles that they do, that they didn’t stand up and say that what he said was wrong. (By the way, don’t we have a word for people who use fear to expand their influence and power? I think it starts with a T, it’s right on the tip of my tongue).The same thing happened when Sarah Palin started the death panel myth.

There’s nothing more dangerous than blind faith. Just because we agree with someone’s ideology doesn’t mean that everything they say is sacred. If you disagree with someone, whether it be Beck, Keith Olbermann, or anybody else, don’t be afraid to stand up and say "This is wrong. We shouldn’t stand for this." We have free will for a reason, and more people need to use it once in a while.