The Greatest Generation is getting unfair treatment and so is our health care industry

Tom Brokaw called them the Greatest Generation. Nancy Pelosi called them un-American, swastika carrying astroturfers. Never mind that some of those un-American astroturfers may have fought against the Swastika and all it stood for. And perhaps that is why the Greatest Generation is really angry about health care reform. They fought for freedom and choice. Like the Swastika, the Democrats health care reform plan stands for neither.

Today, President Obama went on a PR offensive in a White House fabricated townhall, complete with sedate audience, and said "Where we disagree, let's disagree over things that are real, not these wild misrepresentations that don't bear any resemblance to anything that's actually being proposed,"

I find this ironic, last Friday President Obama was in Mclean, Virginia campaigning for Creigh Deeds, the Democratic candidate for Governor, and stated "I don't want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking," he told the crowd. "I want them just to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess."

Really? So which is it? Get out of the way, or let's have a vigorous debate? In the end it doesn't really matter. Obama is now held to such a low standard of accountability in his rhetoric that even glaring contradictions like this one go completely unchallenged. In the same way, Obama engages masterfully in half-truths telling us that "You can keep your health insurance..." until the government payer system, a government sanctioned monopoly, drives your private insurance out of business. He also likes to use the populist tag line ""Your health insurance will be there for you when it counts, not just when you're paying premiums...." Well, so what? What else are we going to extend that logic to? Car insurance? Water and electric? Phone service? or how about my personal favorite: "Your government will be there for you when it counts, not just when your paying taxes...." Frankly, the government has rarely been there for me and when it was there, it was an unwieldy monster that could not get out of its own way. Try moving your Federal Thrift Savings Plan into a private 401K. You'd have an easier time getting a permit for a machine gun in Washington, DC.

The health care plan being pushed by the Democrats is really about power. It has nothing to do with health care. We have a President who has nationalized major sectors of the auto, finance, and banking industry and is now trying to nationalize health care. This is a President who is trying to shift the United States from a market based economy to a nationalized Old Europe socialist nation that will do nothing but creep along in a sickly fashion until it collapses under its own weight ---- and it will.

I am not convinced that health care is broken and I do not believe in the gamesmanship being played with the "number of uninsured." These numbers are as badly manipulated as unemployment numbers. I'm just not convinced that government has proven that it is the solution to the "health care crisis." And be on the look out, after the health care crisis will undoubtedly come another crisis aimed at reducing your freedom of choice even further.

We do need to reform health care, but by relying on market driven principles. For example, by expanding access to private health care through tax incentives and insurance market reforms. If 2008 and 2009 have taught us anything, the collapse of Fannie, Freddie and the credit industry should have provided us all the evidence we need that government interference into market driven service offerings is a recipe for disaster.

Our government was devised to protect our political liberties, not provide an endless stream of entitlements. America was built on the dreams of self-reliance and hard work. It is now choking on the nightmare of handouts and vanishing standards of personal responsibility.