Do not be snowed by Obama's rhetoric concerning health-care reform. It is not about improving quality, insuring the uninsured, reducing Medicare and Medicaid costs or saving costs through prevention.

It is about legislating the first, irreversible step toward a single-payer, government-controlled health system, one sixth of our economy.

Obama and his cohorts, Sen. Ted Kennedy and Reps. Barney Frank and Henry Waxman, learned from the "Hillarycare" debacle, you cannot do it all at once, but you sneak it in by increments.

You pass a 1,000- page bill, HR3200, which requires everyone to be insured and sets up the "public option," a government-sponsored and subsidized insurance plan designed to drive out of business the private health insurance companies that 85 percent of Americans are happy with. Once we have only the government to provide our insurance, we have its Holy Grail, government, one provider/payer health care.

If, as claimed, Obama knows how to save $500 billion in Medicare/Medicaid costs without rationing care, let him demonstrate, then we will be willing to listen to his other plans. Don't hold your breath.

True health-care reform must include tort reform, the end of million-dollar malpractice awards conned out of gullible juries by silver-tongued John Edwards-type lawyers, and giving tax breaks to those who buy their own insurance, same as given to companies that provide employees' coverage. These two items would be a good start.

Jack C. McVey

Pinehurst