We may be able to hold the tide back. We may be able to stop Obama, his cronies, and "the powers that be", especially if Democrats lose control of the House, where spending bills must originate, in 2010. We may be able to stop government intrusion into private health care system, and the final form of ObamaCare passed may be the best we could hope for: one that fixes what is broken (tort reform, less restriction on selling insurance across state lines, and removal of distorting tax incentives that ties insurance to employers) and leaves alone what works (the rest of the system).

Would that mean that we won and our children can live in peace?

Of course not. It might mean that this temporary victory may be so overwhelming, like our victory over U.S.S.R., that no statist would have the audacity to try it again for decades. But more likely than not, we will have to fight another similar battle in our lifetime once more, and our children will almost definitely have to earn their own freedom. After all, we have a republic if we can keep it, and each generation must prove that they can keep it.

Let me first say that I do not believe these people are astroturfing. Absent an evidence to the contrary, I believe that they were demonstrating to say what they believe in the heart of their hearts. However, you have to question if they thought the issue through:

"We feel health care is a right, not a privilege," said Julie Nymann, the owner of Espresso 77, a Jackson Heights espresso bar where the group met. "Yet, we are a small business and we cannot afford to provide insurance to our employees. Something has to be done."

So, Ms. Nymann, as a small business owner, cannot afford to provide health insurance to her employees. I understand that. Health insurance should never have been tied to a job, and people should have been free to choose an insurer in the open market, free from all but minimal regulation to prevent fraud and other crimes. But, as the things are now, Ms. Nymann cannot afford to provide health insurance as a job benefit to her employees, and that's why she wants socialized health care, so that someone else will pay for the health insurance she wants so much for her employees.

I guess that's socialism right there: "Can't someone else pay for this?"

Of course, the problem is when that "someone else" becomes you. As a small business owner, Ms. Nymann is that "someone else" to everyone that's not her. For example, does Ms. Nymann know that ObamaCare includes 8% payroll tax to employers who do not provide qualified health insurance? Can she afford to pay that? How much of that will be coming out of her employees' check?

It's possible that provision will come out in the final version that gets passed (if one gets passed at all), but the truth is, somebody will have to pay for the public option, especially if that public option is to cover undocumented immigrants—who, by the way, cannot pay tax legally so will definitely not be paying for it.

I do not doubt that some small business owners are for ObamaCare in its most socialistic form. After all, being small business owner does not make one an avowed capitalist, and nor does it make one immune from loving "free lunch". But I do seriously doubt that whether a majority of them "like the majority of the American people" support socialized health care. Majority of Americans do support some change in our current health care system, but the change they have in mind is not the change Obama believes in. If you need an example, take tort reform, which has a broad base of support but Obama refuses even to mention.

However, like any argument based in statistics¹, there are many, many pitfalls.

The first obvious question to ask is (after seeing that the number is for every X live births), what about stillbirths? Is it possible that in U.S., what might have been stillbirth gets counted as infant mortality because our superior medical technology gets the child through delivery but the child ends up expiring anyway? Well, the statistics in comparison with a few other countries don't quite support that (although this would, of course, vary depending on what counts as stillbirth and what must be reported; and I can't find a quick comparison to Cuban data).

But the death of an infant counts as either stillbirth or infant mortality only if the parents wanted the child to live and gave their best shot at the delivery. Is it possible that in other countries, if the unborn child does not appear healthy (or "desirable"), that he is deliberately ... "given up"? There is some evidence to support this. It depends on which statistics you look at: if you look at the number of abortions per 1,000 women of child-bearing age, then North America has the lowest abortion rate of populated parts of the world, hands down, and all we have to do is explain the discrepancy between us and Canada. If you look at the number of abortions per 100 known pregnancies, then while the U.S. is at the bottom, other developed region, such as Western Europe are on par with the U.S. (this is actually a surprise to me).

Given that abortion rate far outstrips any infant mortality rate (in North America, 26 children are aborted per 100 known pregnancies!), there is a great potential for a general abortion pattern (maybe the poor get more abortions, the way liberals intend) to affect the infant mortality rate. So, once you include all the data, not just the ones that appear to support your argument, the picture is not quite so clear. It's possible that there is something wrong with infant care in U.S. It's possible that there is nothing substantially wrong with it. In any case, the case for "fixing" our system (is it broken in the first place?) is so weak that it does not merit the cost and social upheaval socialization of our health care system would involve.

P.S. I should note that the data I quote above are widely separated in time (the mortality rate including stillbirth is from a blog post in 2006, and the data on abortion is from 1996), so I wouldn't trust them beyond a general overview and trends, if that.

P.S. I think a better birth-related statistics that would be more reflective of the quality of health care is maternal death rate, not infant mortality rate. After all, so much of infant mortality has to do with genetics, as one of the links above gets at. On the other hand, the adult mother had and has the full benefit of the health care system, with serious genetic defects already filtered out by the process of natural selection, so it ought to be a more equitable measure of the health care system. And indeed, even at the highest level of maternal death rate, the maternal death rate in U.S. compares reasonably with the developed world and very favorably against all the developing regions, including Asia. But then, liberals are not known for letting facts get in their line of argument, so they will continue to cite one unfavorable statistic after another, regardless of how deceptive they might be in the things they hide.

1. such as one using standardized test scores to argue that U.S. high school students are stupid, which neglects that U.S. score is average of all students while the tests for any other nation is average of top 50% or less, as a good fraction of students go to technical schools where they are not subject to the same academic standards

Well, Dr. Dean claims that it's because trial lawyers' lobby is too powerful and no one wants to take them on. That may be true at some level, but that's half truth.

The real truth is that not only is it difficult to prevent malpractice suits, but we should not limit malpractice suits in any way whatsoever because malpractice suits save lives. Trying to limit this beneficial operation would be as horrifying as it is unethical. Just talk to this father whose son came back to life after he won the malpractice suit against the greedy doctors.

As a late-comer to politics, I can't say that I know much about the man's work or what he stood for, other than that he was a liberal and that I probably wouldn't have agreed with many of his positions on most issues. Well, regardless of the disagreements, if anyone wants to "put aside our differences for today and respect the great work and achievements of Sen. Kennedy", I have nothing against that. Everyone deserves some respect once they pass away.

But, for those who still remain with us on Earth in this country of ours, I am very glad that Rush Limbaugh anticipated what the left may have done. And it was in March, too.

Now, if the left wants to politicize the death of a man, they now need to work against the backdrop of a prediction made more than 5 months ago. If the left would really stoop to the level of exploiting a man's death for their own agenda (well, even though it was also the late senator's agenda as well), I hope that in the light of the prediction made 5 months ago, the public will see it as the cheap political maneuver that it will be.

The same can't be said for the legions of people you hear on television, or read in the op-ed pages, or chat with at weekend barbecues, raging about taxpayer-funded health care as an unworkable, inefficient, Orwellian evil.

This is a something of a Churchillian moment. Never before have so many known so little about so much. The meme that my Slate colleague Timothy Noah has been tracking about Medicare not being a government program has two sources: ignorance and mendacity. Some people may really not know that Medicare is taxpayer-funded health care. That's ignorance. Many more people know it—and know the degree to which taxpayers are already funding lots of health care for them and their loved ones—and argue otherwise. That's mendacity.

I won't defend those who claim Medicare isn't a government program. They are hypocrites who either don't want to cut the benefits their are eligible for, or, more likely in the case of rich politicians, they will say anything to placate their base, even if it's patently untrue (I'll come back to this later). But, I object to this:

After the stock-research scandals of the 1990s, analysts were required to disclose whether they or their families owned stock in the companies they were talking about. That has since emerged as a key gauge of credibility. I'd like to see something similar for the health care debate. Before they weigh in on the prospects for health care reform, interview subjects—pundits, talking heads, policy wonks, editors, members of Congress—would have to disclose whether they or their family members rely on taxpayer-funded health insurance.

Except for Medicaid (which I think, we can allow to stand for some time, even though it is an evil—but perhaps necessary—government-funded program) and the Indian reservation health care, everyone who is receiving some sort of government health care actually deserve it: they paid into the system in money or blood (VA, which I will leave out because it's an exceptional case where the government is not only empowered but should be obliged to provide). We cannot, while complying with the Fourth Amendment, take these systems away from these people without just compensation (say, reimbursement of all their Medicare and Social Security tax in inflation-adjusted dollars, plus a nominal fee for breaking the "contract"). Nor should they be a target of criticism because they are simply receiving benefits from programs that they themselves paid into.

And this is why we should not allow further government encroachment. We let Social Security stand after FDR instituted it. We let Medicare stand even after LBJ's Great Society programs failed. And now these programs which we are forced to pay for is being used as a brand to label us "hypocrites". Talk about insult upon injury. Expect more of this down the line if we let this ObamaCare stand after Obama's socialist programs fail.

Now, as for what to do with Social Security and Medicare, well, what can we do? They are evil government programs, and it is incumbent on us conservatives to eliminate the necessity for these programs so that they may be allowed to die. The answer to this is probably not too dissimilar to Bush's failed Social Security reform: let people opt out.

I think we need to make a firm stand that people who have already paid into the system will be guaranteed the benefits they would have under the old system (yes, I am taking a page out of Obama playbook, but please bear with me). They can opt to continue to pay into Social Security and Medicare, and they will have the same benefits they would have had without the reform. Given that Social Security and Medicare would be hemorrhaging money soon, this means these programs will run a deficit before they die from lack of subscribers. I think we should pay for these deficits in these programs. Think of it as a down payment for getting the government out of our health and retirement. Think of it as similar to the price our Founding Fathers paid, in blood and war funds, so that the colonists can live freely without the interference from the empire.

If we truly believe in the free market, I think we can believe that a majority of those being forced to pay for Social Security and Medicare would choose to take control of their own funds, either to spend it in the now, or putting it away for retirement in some low-risk funds. And for the small minority who choose to remain in the program, I believe our economy, free of this tax burden, will be strong enough to pay for them, even though these entitlement programs will run deficits, like the USPS or Amtrak. And later we can make the system into an "opt-in" so that this burden will be even less.

But, this is all in the future. I happen to be a proponent of the market in health care and retirement systems. But as all of you may know, we may not get there immediately. Because first, we got to take back the White House, and we got to take back the Senate and the House. For now, before all that, we must resist further government encroachment into health care.

P.S. Now, I know that Social Security and Medicare don't work as they should: as a trust fund. Instead, it does work as a ponzi scheme, where the current beneficiaries are paid for by the current tax payers. But, as long as we are making a moral argument, we shouldn't punish the participants for the defects of the system itself.

Mr. Burton doesn't answer the questions. Regardless of what the question is, he keeps repeating the same, presumably well-rehearsed talking point over and over. In fact, it's very reminiscent of this "interview" a while ago:

I have a suspicion that Mr. Burton is not a human, or, at the very least, that he's not sentient. From the way he answers questions, it seems to me that he scans the question for keywords and forms an answer based on that keyword from his limited database of responses. 'Kinda like Alice.

"We have over 40 million people without insurance in this country today, and that is unacceptable," Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) said. "If we would just quit squabbling so much, we could get that number up to 50 or even 100 million. Why, there's no reason we can't work together to deny health care to everyone but the richest 1 percent of the population."

The rich (especially those with the assets hard, cold cash) will always prosper. The public-funded health care does not gravely harm the rich fat cats with the "millionaires' tax". The rich will always find a way to survive and thrive. That's why they are rich—those who don't have the ability will lose their wealth soon enough, without the help from the government.

What the socialist programs such as the proposed health care will destroy is the middle class. They cannot hide assets overseas as the rich can, and it is far more difficult for them to move overseas when things get really bad here.

So, support socialism if you hate the middle class (either because you are poor and you hate those who worked their way up there, or because you are rich and you hate not having enough power over the middle class, or you are just self-hating). If you truly, truly hate the rich, support capitalism and encourage competition in market place—the entrenched interests are far more easily toppled by an intrepid competitor than the government (look at Microsoft v. Google, or for an older example, IBM v. Apple in the personal computing business).

WASHINGTON -- The number two Senate Republican said Tuesday replacing a public health care option with a nonprofit private cooperative wouldn't win any more Republican support, saying they are essentially the same thing.

Sen. Jon Kyl (R., Ariz.), said Republican objections were more fundamental than simply changing the name of a new national entity to compete with private medical insurers.

"It's [the same thing] by another name, it is a trojan horse," Mr. Kyl said, speaking on a conference call with reporters.

Mr. Kyl said even if the idea of a public option and that of a medical review for older people by their doctor were dropped altogether from the proposed reforms, he doubted whether many Republicans would support Democrats' efforts to introduce sweeping health-care reforms.

He's absolutely right. The public plan wasn't a "trojan horse" for the single-payer system because it was so obvious right from the start. Well, the health care co-op is a trojan horse because it isn't so obvious from the get-go—namely, the name is different—but many of the details would be similar to the public "option", which means it has to lead to single-payer system, maybe just not as quickly.

I am glad to see that Republicans are also tackling the right issue:

He said he believed any health-care reform should start with a move to tackle medical malpractice, arguing that billions of dollars could be saved in health-care costs each year if doctors didn't have to practice "defensive medicine."

Mr. Kyl said small employers should be allowed to join together to give them more muscle when negotiating terms with health insurers, and that health insurance should be permitted to be sold across state lines like other forms of insurance.

These are small adjustments that we can make that won't face popular opposition (especially if you don't count trial lawyers, their lobbyists, and their congressmen as "people") and will improve our great system significantly.

There's a plan that fixes what is broken, unlike the ones out there proposing to fix what ain't.

Statism and socialism is like wildfire. If you have even a small seed of it left alive, it will soon spread and consume the whole nation. If we let them introduce even a small bit of socialism in this legislation, it will grow root which will crack the foundation of our republic.

If they want to make "compromises", let us make them in the full range of options, not in the stacked deck they built for us. Let us make some sort of compromise between what we want: abolition of Social Security and Medicare (which will be phased out as those who paid into the system are no longer around); a minimal safety net for those truly destitute, but maximal choice for those of us who would rather choose his own destiny, and what they want: subordination of the individual before the powerful state which controls the individual's livelihood past 65, his income until then, and now his health.

I think it's a fair compromise for now if we let them keep Social Security and Medicare for now, leaving it on a slow downward spiral, don't you think?