Logical Fallacies

The article I chose to analyze is "Cure More, Spend Less" by Tommy G. Thompson. This article goes into detail about the need for our presidential candidates to put focus towards health care as one of the ways our government can perform more efficiently. Because he is a Republican, he especially feels that the Republican Party has a strong position on the issue of health. Thompson also states his opinion on other topics that he feels people should focus on such as problems with the Food and Drug Administration(FDA), setting goals to find cures for breast cancer, prostate cancer, and colon cancer, and the possibility of creating a flat tax.
Although this article is mainly of Thompson's opinion, it does carry some logical fallacies. In the article, Thompson jumps from health care to the FDA, then to the cures for certain cancers, and then taxes. This shows the use of the Non sequitar fallacy. The article does not follow from the previous statements. The author goes from one point to another point and leaps to another point that had nothing to do with the original argument. The author has left out information that could have linked those ideas together. In addition to the Non sequitar fallacy, the Red Herring fallacy is also demonstrated in this article. As the author introduces another topic, he gets the reader off track at what the real issue at hand is.
The end of the article states that Thompson is a former Republican governor of Wisconsin and secretary of health and human services. Upon reading this, many people would think that Thompson is a reliable source because of his credentials. Where he argues that campaigns should look at the possibility of creating a flat tax to replace our progressive tax, he assumes that our taxing system now is counterproductive. He does not provide evidence of how or why it is counterproductive. Therefore, this demonstrates the Appeal to Improper Authority fallacy. Thompson is an expertise in the field of health but argues about taxes.