by Dacia Nichol

This debate has whittled down to a point that Administration 44 needs to just acknowledge already: Americans do want health reform, but they don't want a government option. Even Barry's state media forces (formally known as the mainstream media) are coming out with polls and research articles acknowledging this. Further, they're even dissecting the healthcare industry as a whole, coming up with savings options, major problems which need to be addressed such as tort law atrocities, and their results essentially give Congress a nice road map to a successful reform bill.

The Democrat response? Push harder. Make demands. Throw around radical vocabulary to describe the opposition. The will of the people is being misled by "fishy" media outlets, not common sense or rational thought.

Senator Jim DeMint said what we're all thinking - "If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him." Barry obviously called DeMint out on it because he knows it's true.

Now, from the spirit of boredom and aggravation with this round and round again debate (GOP presents facts, issues, concerns - Obama repeats himself minus whatever language was causing controversy...still no "how", just vague ideas about "what"), this author would like to approach this health care thing from another angle - getting to the bottom of the "entitlement" mentality.

So...this nation has lived a life of certain excess in recent years. Advances in our sciences tell us that mixing a high-cholesterol diet with a desk job is not a good idea. One donut is okay, but a box is ridiculous. A "Quarter Pounder" is fine on occasion, but a "Third Pounder" has more calories than the average person needs in an entire day (I know - they're required to post the calories on the menus here in NYC to "protect" the consumer...still fast food is pulling in record profits...). On the flip side, induced vomiting strains your heart, starving will kill you, and single-food diets deprive you of necessary nutrition, spiraling all sorts of deficiency problems.

Whatever. Eat what you want. It's your choice, your freedom, your personal peril.

Whoa now...what do you mean you want me to pay for your cholesterol meds? AND your Viagra?? Hold it right there Kimosabe - I smell bull$hit.

People want to screw up their lives and have someone else pay to fix it? I'm confused...where else in our lives does this logic apply?

- When you're in an at-fault car accident, who pays for the damage? (Don't look my way)

- When you drop out of college because you're failing, who's responsible for your student loans? (Not me)

- When you lose your driver's license, who pays for the replacement? (Nope)

- When you break your glasses, who pays to fix them? (No way)

- When your cat starts spraying the house, who pays to neuter him? (Oh hell no)

In an additional stroke of irony, when you get sick from things that aren't lifestyle driven such as a cold or flu virus, who pays for the over-the-counter meds to help you make it through? That's right - unless you end up hospitalized, you can just take your happy self to the drugstore on your own tab.

Given the above, where is this entitlement mentality coming from? Perhaps it's been slowly seeping in disguised with "consumer and worker protection" labels.

Consider the following (BIG Bill Nye the Science Guy fan as a kid):

- Why do we have unions?

- Why do we have the FDA?

- Why do we have tort law?

The whole idea behind all three of these concepts is that there is an existing evil which people need to be protected from. FDR's "New Deal" was essentially based on this idea - all of his programs were crafted with the idea of reducing the "harshness" of American life which had increased exponentially during the first part of his reign.

So what did that lead to? An expectation that the government would protect the people not just from enemies abroad, but also from enemies within the framework of the force behind our prosperity - capitalism. While some regulation is good, and part of the "necessary evil" behind limited government, the overall mood of the New Deal opened the doors to a very dangerous idea:

I am not responsible for my own choices.

And thus began the manifestation of the entitlement disease. It took a couple of generations, but the notion that the government is responsible for saving you when you've made a bad choice took hold and spread. Once this mentality was fully implanted in the American mind, it began to swell and infest all aspects of our lives...leading to program after program that started with the the best of intentions and ended with slop and greed.

Interesting enough, the times where the citizen is held responsible tends to be the times when they really weren't at fault. You've all heard about the lady spilling hot coffee on her lap and suing McD's. Maybe you've also heard about a burglar injuring himself upon breaking and entering and subsequently suing the family for his injuries. There's a reason we call ourselves a "lawsuit happy nation". How about the woman who spills her drink in a retail store, slips on it, and sues? Do you think these lawsuits would be possible without a government fostering the idea behind is - that you're not responsible for your actions, someone else is?

When a judge can try to sue a dry cleaning company for millions after losing his pants, are we shocked that tort law has driven medical insurance through the roof? Does that roll into the outrageous cost of health care? You better believe it.

More babble on this another time...