U.S. health care best in the world

As I read Froma Harrop's opinion column ("Obama should be pushing universal health care," Sunday) I reflexively shook my head in disbelief that someone writing for a major newspaper could be so lacking in common sense.

While we all have compassion for people suffering from illness, government-provided health care has proved disastrous everywhere it has been tried.

Long waiting periods for routine tests and procedures, and substandard practitioners are the inevitable outcome of centralized health-care oligarchies..

Your writer amazingly proclaims America cannot compete with countries that offer government-dictated health care while America is being overrun with people wanting to come here, not for health care, but for the vast opportunity available that those other countries cannot provide due to massive burdensome taxation caused by their universal health-care folly.

What the universal health-care lobby fails to realize is that, left to make their own financial decisions, Americans can do amazing things.

Each family sitting around the kitchen table looking at their own situation can make much better decisions about where to spend their money than any number of Washington bureaucrats.

Yes, this meant that some young people or those at low risk may decide that paying the mortgage or investing in their education or a small business for a short time may be a better use of their money than paying an insurance plan that covers everything including the kitchen sink.

If Democrats were truly a party of the people (your writer's misguided description) instead of a party of the government, they'd abandon their disdain for the judgment of the American people and keep the government's hands off the best and most innovative health-care system in the world.

Gordon Breault

Columbus, Ohio