To the editor:

For the past few weeks now, I have heard people discussing who should be blamed for the problems with the Affordable Care Act website.

There has also been a lot of discussion about whether the country can afford it, whether people’s insurance costs will go up or down and whether the quality of care will go up or down — all of which is entirely beside the point.

What everyone seems to have forgotten is that this is socialism.

This is a violation of commercial rights and free-market rights.

The federal and state bureaucracy government — not the legitimate constitutional government — does not have the authority to own a lemonade stand, let alone take over an entire industry. That is not one of its 18 powers. It has seized an entire market from us and created a monopoly.

Another thing everyone seems to have forgotten is that we are on the verge of bankruptcy because of the other federal- and state-owned monopolies. Even discussing things like broken websites, price or quality is like asking what kind of mileage the car that just ran over you gets.

This is why we need to have a commercial-rights amendment and a free-market rights amendment in both the Missouri and federal constitutions — not just to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, but to prevent a tragedy like that from ever being done to us again.