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Hypothetical scenario:

You’ve been mowing the grass all day, and you want something to drink, and bad!  You go to your local convenience store to get a refreshing… what do you want?  A soda?  Water?  A sports drink?  Tea?  Iced coffee, perhaps… I had to throw that one in.  Seriously though, there must be something like 1300 different drinks to choose from!

You look at those humongous fridges, and notice something new there… something unique.  An unflavored, unsweetened, mineralesque, vitamin-infused alkaloid for the masses.  A public option!  What makes this one unique?  Well, the company that’s punching out this product doesn’t have to make a profit.  What’s more, they get to write the rules for the other drinks on the shelf.  In five years, ten years time, which drinks will be left to choose from?

But, wait!  What if I want a specialty drink?  What if I’m not like everybody else?  Instead of a collective, we are a conglomerate of individuals with our own wants and needs… and while soft drinks are tangentially related to the discussion at hand (see below), I hope it’s obvious I’m talking about health care.  With 1300 different choices, health care reform, or health insurance reform (in the Administration’s new parlance), should be directed towards keeping a decision between you and your doctor just that, without the involvement of these clowns.

FROM CNN:  Beverage companies are running a TV ad opposing one congressional proposal that would pay for reform, in part, with a soft-drink tax.

“This is no time for Congress to be adding a tax to the simple pleasures we all enjoy … like juice drinks and soda,” the announcer in the TV ad says. “Taxes never made anyone healthy.”

But Obama is ready to play hardball.

“We can’t kick the can down the road any longer,” Obama said at a Wednesday afternoon news conference at the White House. “Deferring reform is nothing more than defending the status quo.”

He added: “Those who would oppose our efforts should take a hard look at just what it is they’re defending.”

Obama also reassured Americans who are happy with private insurance and oppose a government option.

“If you like your doctor or health care provider, you can keep them. If you like your health care plan, you can keep that, too. … You will save money [under the plan] … “

Fierce Urgency of Now

Using the same logic of a legislatively-successful, although policy-wise, a disputably-failed Stimulus package, Congress and the White House were determined to rush through some of our nation’s largest and most widely sweeping legislation before their window of opportunity closed.  After the President botched a health care press conference last week, in which he forced upon the nation a discussion – nay, an argument – about race, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that a health care reform bill would not happen until after the August recess.  Even Harry Reid knew the President had no plan to offer.  So off they went, home for the summer.

In doing so, with little to say to their constituents about the issue at hand, the Dems became easy targets for the raucous town hall meetings we’re witnessing now.  A handful of citizens, utilizing their First Amendment rights, have turned these meetings into “town hells.”  In turn, these citizens have become easy targets of both the Democratic National Committee, who called these Americans “angry mobs,” and the White House.  White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs alleged these grassroots movements were artificial and manufactured, calling them “Astroturf” (clever).  In the briefing room, Gibbs said, ”I hope people will take a jaundiced eye to what is clearly the Astroturf nature of grassroots lobbying.  This is manufactured anger.”  Wait a minute, Gibbs; I thought “community organizing” was the great, high calling of our generation.  What’s so wrong with it now?

The most frightening effort, though, to align the nation behind a common goal by ”Organizing for Health Care” (crafted with a combination of ideas from Saul Alinsky’s community organizing manual Rules for Radicals and George Orwell’s conception of a “Ministry of Truth” from his book 1984), came from White House Director of Communications for the Office of Health Reform, former journalist Linda Douglass asked on the White House Blog for citizens to report fellow citizens to the White House for using language regarding health care that seemed “fishy.”  Read it yourself; I’m not making this up.  This effort garnered more attention when Texas Senator John Cornyn (rightly) publicly embarrassed the President in an open letter, demanding he cease the program and call off the Thought Police.

Remember, actions such as these were deemed illegal during the Bush Administration, with domestic wiretapping labelled as “spying” on Americans.  Bush’s program attempted to protect Americans from being cremated in city streets by planes falling from the sky.  Now, we are protecting people from information that could derail the Administration’s health care agenda.  Change has indeed come to America.

This is where we are:  A Brave New World where our media has embedded itself in government, and the government, with Linda Douglass as the White House’s Media Czar (you could call her our federal Net Nanny), controls the flow of information throughout the country, telling you what to believe about health care, without once citing a single fact from an independent organization, or H.R. 3200, the proposed bill at hand.   The media, in turn, sides with the Administration (of course; they need a bailout of their own), and paints dissent over health care as derangement, even going as far as Paul Krugman did by suggesting racial motivations.  Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi recently provided cover for the media’s slant by equating Town Hall Protesters to Nazis, showing she has los juevos grandes Keith Olbermann surely must envy.

It wasn’t too long ago, as I remember, that Code Pink was sitting in on Senate hearings, shouting down the testimony of a certain Marine General.  Yes, I remember when MoveOn.org had that full page ad calling General David Petraeus “General Betray Us,” effectively derailing constructive debate over the Iraq War.  Democratic friend Cindy Sheehan even planted herself outside Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, demanding to “speak” with him.  I was curious, so I went looking; what was the Bush White House’s response to this kind of dissent?

Well, former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer had this to say about anti-war protesters:

“I think the president welcomes the fact that we are a democracy and people in the United States, unlike Iraq, are free to protest and to make their case known.”

Furthermore, former White House Press Secretary Trent Duffy said this about the anti-war protests:

“The American people have a right to protest, and the right of free speech is something that we’re fighting for in this war on terror, to preserve that right of free speech.  So the President welcomes opinions from all Americans.”

This morning, Princess Pelosi and her left-hand man, Steny, published an Opinion Editorial in USA Today calling the health care protests “Un-American,” saying:  “These disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views — but of the facts themselves.  Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American.”

When her constituents and echo chamber affiliates (such as the ANSWER Coalition, MoveOn.org, Code Pink) protested, though, I guess it wasn’t Un-American.  Wait, maybe I’m confused…

Of course, pay no attention to the upside-down American flag; way back in 2006, dissent was patriotic.  Such high-level hypocrisy is astounding.  Given the fact that these individuals were alerted by emails, and bused in by MoveOn.org and friends, was this artificial, manufactured, Astroturf?

Why Ask Why

Simply put, the President does not have a plan that he is willing to speak freely about.  Oh, he has a plan.  It’s nothing you want to hear, but he has a plan.  You can see it at work in Great Britain, France, and Canada.  So why is it so scary for Americans to conceptualize, if it is “at work” in other countries?

Yes, aforementioned White House Blog, John Adams was right in saying, “The facts are stubborn things.”  The facts are, 90% percent of voters are insured, and 75% of those voters are satisfied with their insurance.  To insure the uninsured will require a sacrifice from Americans they are skeptical of, and when a plan is intentionally shrouded by bureaucrats trying to push legislation on the citizenry, historically, Americans revolt.

Look at examples of state-run health care throughout the world; why doesn’t it work?  Canada’s cancer death rate is higher than ours; why?  Why, according to a British paper, is our cancer survival rate better than all of Europe?

Furthermore, why would Jack Layton, the socialist leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party, come to Washington, D.C., to speak to Democratic members of Congress about how great Canada’s health care is?  No, really, why would he do that, if their system is better?

Let me ask you this:  Why would Belinda Stronach, Member of the Canadian Parliament, come to California for breast cancer treatment?  Why would Silvio Berlusconi, Italian Prime Minister, come to the Mayo Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, for his pacemaker?  According to the World Health Organization, Italy’s national health care system is 2nd in the world (France ranked first); our semi-private system ranks 37th.

So, given that, why didn’t Silvio get treatment there?  Why didn’t Ted Kennedy, the liberal lion of the Senate, set the example and show how great a public insurance plan actually is by going to France, Italy, or neighboring Canada for treatment of his brain tumor?  He could have gone to one of our own public health care centers for veterans, like the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, but instead settled for Duke University Medical Center.  Why?  With all the pull he has, why did he simply settle for a system such as ours, one that he wants to scrap, ranked 37th in the world?

Why?  Why is there a private health care business, Timely Medical Alternatives, in Canada that does nothing else but brings people to the United States for treatment?  I thought Canada’s system was better than ours; as you know, our system is driven by what Princess Pelosi calls “immoral profits.”  How would Canadians survive, if they didn’t have the backstop of an American health care system to rely on?  Is that why Jack Layton came to Washington?  You see, the World Health Organization (and others) can create metrics to say what it wants to say ideologically, but they cannot ignore these “stubborn facts.”

All of this data stands as evidence supporting a verdict opposite what this government is selling us, and Americans can see what’s at stake here.  According to the Lewin Group, the insurance ‘exchange’ that’s part of Obama’s public option will move ”up to 119.1 million of the 171.6 million people who now have private employer or non-group coverage would move to the public plan (70 percent).”  Seventy percent of private insurance would be unfunded; the private option would begin to disappear.  I spoke about this Trojan Horse back in June on my post Sheep/Dogs.

Americans want two things:  increased access to health care, and decreased costs for health insurance.  Costs are increasing greater than inflation, and that’s a problem for any program, public or private (Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid come to mind).  Health care reform should do those two things, but instead, the Administration and Congress’ plans give government vast control of your health care options, and costs too much.  It’s a bad bill, and if Americans can’t get a good bill on health care, then they’ll simply invoke the Hippocratic Oath:  “First, do no harm.”  Something should be done, though, in the way of reform, with government relying on governance, and not business.  There are a couple of different ways to achieve lower costs and increased access to care.

My next post will show how to achieve those goals.