When it comes to health care reform, the Republican mantra is essentially that we can't afford to lower health care costs. How can we afford not to?

Instead of lowering health costs, the Republicans propose tax breaks, no doubt similar to their last $2 trillion tax giveaway targeted mainly at the rich. For the very wealthy that was more than enough to pay their full health care costs. For the rest of us nothing changed. That's the Republican health care plan. 

One wonders why these Republicans thought we could afford an unnecessary war they lied to get us into, a war that cost more than is proposed for health care reform. Forty-five thousand more Americans die every year from a lack of health insurance than were killed by Saddam Hussein before we invaded Iraq.

Perhaps health care reform proponents should use the Republican new math in which addition equals subtraction. The national debt increased by $5 trillion and new obligations did likewise during the eight years these self-proclaimed deficit hawks ran Washington. But since by self-definition deficit hawks can't increase the deficit, it looks like Republicans conflated more with less.

The really crazy part is that all those anti-public-option Republican politicians have a public option: a health care plan provided for and paid for by the federal government. That's not socialististic. It's the proper role of government.

LEN ZIEFERT

Concord