It's far more important that Congress gets a health care reform bill right than to get it done by the end of the year. We don't have a clear idea of what a final health care reform bill would look like, yet we're being told that it has to be passed by the end of the year. This could be the most important legislation since the creation of Medicare and it would be inexcusably reckless to push it through without the careful consideration it deserves.

Some of the proposed features that have been discussed are disturbing, the so-called public option would put us on what looks like an irreversible path to a government controlled system that could overrule health care decisions made by patients and their doctors. The proposed $500 billion cuts to Medicare would be a terrible disservice to millions of seniors. But right now we simply don't know what a bill will or won't cover.

As usual, the root problem is politics. Shouldn't both parties cooperate in producing a health care bill that's well-researched and in the public interest? A first step in that direction would be to scrap the arbitrary legislative deadlines.

Chelia Thorpe

Gorham