GOP Agenda Is Behind the Healthcare Crisis

Re “States Rein In Health Costs,” April 24: The drop in federal aid for healthcare is directly tied to President Bush’s war adventures. Overseas war entanglements cause an inability to take care of our working poor, and now even the welfare poor.

Doug Korthof

Seal Beach

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In the beginning I was horrified when Bush and his conservative cronies took control over our government. Now I am starting to see the wisdom in the “give them enough rope and they’ll hang themselves” technique.

They want to cut Medicaid benefits, block minimum wage increases, stop bankruptcy options for those who can’t afford the medical bills they’ve accrued because they can’t afford healthcare. They are trying to block the filibusters, cynically claiming they are now used “against people of faith.” Meanwhile, they claim our country and the states are in debt because of the liberals’ overspending on social institutions that have been in place for years.

Rarely do you hear in the same speech or article that our country is spending billions to rebuild Iraq (which we paid good money to destroy) or that benefits have also been cut for those people in the military who risked their lives to bring our form of democracy to the region.

Go for it, guys! The way you’re going, Democrats and liberals won’t have to spend a penny on campaigns in 2008; the starving, uninsured masses will want anyone but you by that time.

Anna Collins

Buena Park

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The Medicaid crisis is easy to explain: We have decided as a society to deny basic medical services to our poorest and most vulnerable neighbors in order to give “tax relief” to the most fortunate. This is just one more piece of evidence for what is now an inescapable conclusion: We Americans are, at heart, a mean and selfish people.

John Miller

Irvine