Government makes health care worse

I think Dan Hynes got it dead wrong. The Bush tax cuts started the economy on the road to recovery from a recession that started in the 4th quarter of 1999.

There would have been surpluses in the budget every year if we had not been attacked on Sept 11. The war against terror has drained our country's resources.

Medical research should be basically funded by private enterprise. When the government gets involved, projects go on even after they have been proven failures.

Politicians don't want to lose the funds for their state, city or favorite lobbyist. Private enterprise will only fund research that can be profitable.

Health care is expensive, but government regulations make it more expensive.

The state legislature dictates that certain procedures and illnesses must be covered by all health care insurance. Some of these are very expensive procedures with questionable results.

When the government has been involved with health care as it has with mental health, we can see the results: Homeless people setting fires in order to keep warm, attacking other citizens because of some imagined harm, throwing themselves off of buildings because they were too sick to realize that they needed medication.

Health care is a limited resource. There are just so many doctors, nurses and hospitals.

In our current system, these resources are allocated by the ability to pay (private insurance, personal wealth, Medicare or Medicaid). I have seen how the allocation of this resource takes place in England and I would not like to live under a system where a minimum wage clerk that cannot be fired for mistakes makes all of my health care decisions.

When it comes down to choosing a president of our country, I would much rather have one who has seen the terrible destruction of war first hand, such as Truman, Eisenhower, JFK and John McCain, than a leader who only read about war like Johnson, Nixon, Reagan and Barack Obama.

Tom O'Donnell

Palatine