Personally, I found the term “public option” rather curious the first time I heard it. After all, who doesn’t like options, and why not one more? But as George Washington said, “Government is force”, and bureaucrats aren’t known for giving people choices. And some proponents of the public option, like Congressman Barney Frank, are quite open about their preference for a single payer system. Yet President Obama assures us that “if you like your current health insurance, you can keep it”. (Based on language in the various bills, he should have added “but not for long”, but let’s leave that aside for now.)

Much of the debate centers on a government “takeover” of health care, comparing the reforms to socialized medicine in other countries, like Canada and the United Kingdom. Based on current proposals, such comparisons are not very enlightening. Proponents are technically correct that the proposals are not true socialized medicine, but opponents can argue, with equal legitimacy, that that sure looks like where they’re headed.

But one aspect of British health care that could be particularly relevant to the “public option” proposal has been conspicuously absent from the debate thus far. That is the fact that in the U.K. the National Health Service (“NHS”) and private health care coexist. Since the proposal under discussion here is a public “option”, doesn’t that imply the continued existence of private options?

My family and I lived in London for a couple of years, and experienced British health care. We even used the same hospital where Princess Diana gave birth to Princes William and Harry. I don’t know how it looked to a princess, but to us ordinary American, it looked old, dark and dingy.

The NHS appeared to be as abysmal as claimed. “Free” medical care was supposedly available to all, but waiting times were long, and care was often denied. NHS doctors earned only slightly more than coal miners, so there were never enough doctors, nurses or hospitals to meet the demand. At one point, I understand that kidney dialysis was automatically denied to anyone over age 55. If you need dialysis, that’s not a “death panel”, that’s a death sentence!

But being employed by an American company, my U.S. health insurance allowed my family to have private health care. Most of our doctors had Harvard Medical degrees. Waiting rooms were often empty, and appointments were kept on time. The services were excellent, and the prices were actually lower than they would have been at home. Yet in all of the debate over a “public option”, I haven’t seen a single mention of the private health care alternative in the U.K.

Back when Hillary Clinton was spearheading her health care initiative, Bill Clinton signed a major crime bill into law (assault weapon bans, more police on the streets, and so on). Somebody did a count, and found more felonies in the health care bill than in the crime bill. Among others, simply paying a doctor for medical services would have been a felony for both doctor and patient! President Obama is trying to avoid the mistakes of Hillarycare, but can he avoid the temptation to use mandates to force the American people to do what he wants?

The proposed “public option” is obviously another welfare program, and as such its merits can be debated ad infinitum. But the real concern should be whether it is truly an “option”, or whether it will turn into a mandate. The president says we can keep our existing coverage, so let’s demand that he put it in writing. Rather than a “public option”, let’s demand a private option.

Any health care reform package should guarantee that outside of the “public option” plan, the government will not interfere with doctors practicing medicine, with hospitals treating patients, or with insurance companies offering competing insurance policies. As citizens of a free country, we should demand nothing less. Like the British, we should be free to choose any doctors, any treatments, and any insurance coverage that we deem appropriate.

Absent that freedom, the so-called “public option” will soon become a mandate, and we will suffer runaway cost inflation, lower quality and rationing of health care.

But 25 years on, we’re about there. The technology exists, and is being deployed. CCTV cameras cover almost every square inch of London, and are rapidly being installed in most US cities. Worse yet, many people who would have protested such intrusive government surveillance 25 years ago now accept red light cameras, speeding cameras, and massive government eavesdropping on telephones and e-mail as “necessary” security measures. We line up, take off our shoes and submit to totally unconstitutional searches just to get on an airplane. So they not only have the technology, they have our acquiescence.

Think about it. Not a day that goes by without a story in your local newspaper about technology used to ticket a traffic scofflaw, catch a criminal, or bust a cheating spouse. Surveillance videos are reviewed any time something happens, even in seemingly remote locations. No trial lawyer would start a case without demanding e-mail records, even of those thought long since deleted. Passing through a toll booth leaves your presence time- and date-stamped, and don’t even ask about your cell phone records!

And how do they keep us from demanding our freedom back? Fear, the eternal tool of tyrants. In 1984, Orwell spoke of endless wars in far off corners of the earth. Today we have active wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, frequent incursions into Pakistan and daily saber rattling over Iran. And to keep it geographically balanced, we have North Korea.

In case the wars don’t keep us fearful enough, we have terrorist plots and pandemics. I don’t think the terrorist threat level has ever gotten below “Amber”, and the swine flu makes the news daily. The swine flu “pandemic” hasn’t killed nearly as many people as the plain old seasonal flu, but you wouldn’t know it from the main stream media. Before that, it was the avian flu, similarly a non-event, and before that, SARS. Remember SARS? A “totally new” virus, almost always fatal, and against which we had “no natural immunity”. If we had “no natural immunity”, why didn’t we all catch it, and why are any of us still here to read my blog?

In Washington, the fear-mongering goes on. Without health care reform, we can’t possibly continue to afford health care. (I’m afraid we’re about to find out how well we can afford it WITH health care reform!) And just in case the tea bag movement figures out that health care reform is a really bad deal, don’t forget global warming. After eleven years of global cooling, we’re still being threatened with “imminent” catastrophe if we don’t give up our modern way of life and go back to living in caves. As if the government has EVER been the solution, and not the cause, of almost any problem you can think of.

Why are we afraid, and in the light of history, how can we possibly believe that government will protect us? Freedom has blessed America with unimaginable wealth, ever improving standards of living, longer, healthier lives, and countless other blessings. Our government has brought us wars, panics, recessions, bubbles, the Great Depression and very likely another one in the making. They’ve also brought us the public school system, the post office and the DMV. Yet we are about to let that same government take over our health care and tax affordable, reliable energy out of existence.

Even George Orwell would be amazed.

“On page 151 of this legislative pork-fest [the 'stimulus' bill] is one of the clandestine nuggets of social policy manipulation that are peppered throughout the bill. Section 9201 of the stimulus package establishes the ‘Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research.’ This body, which would be made up of federal bureaucrats will ‘coordinate the conduct or support of comparative effectiveness and related health services research.’ Sounds benign enough, but the man behind the Coordinating Council, Health and Human Services Secretary-designate [since withdrawn] (and tax cheat) Tom Daschle, was kind enough to explain the goal of this organization. It is to cut health care costs by preventing Americans from getting treatments that the government decides don’t meet their standards for cost effectiveness. In his 2008 book on health care, he explained that such a council would, ‘lower overall spending by determining which medicines, treatments and procedures are most effective-and identifying those that do not justify their high price tags.’ Once a panel of government experts decides what is and what is not cost-effective by their definition, the government will stop paying for treatments, medicines, therapies or devices that fall into the latter category. … Mind you, they are not simply looking to exclude treatments that don’t work, but to exclude treatments that are effective, but whose cost, in their opinion, does not justify their use. You, the patient, and your physician don’t get a vote. This would make the federal government the single most important decision-maker regarding health care for every patient in America.”

“The time has come to set aside childish things.”

Perhaps if the government stopped trying to be our Nanny State, we would be a little less childish.

I don’t know who said that first, but we are on the brink of relearning that lessson the hard way. With all of the media clamoring for our attention 24/7, I’m seeing virtually nothing pointing out the many obvious parallels just within the past 100 years. Growing up as baby boomers, we often wondered how the German people could have stood silently by while Adolph Hitler carried out his disasterous plans. Yet apart from the Holocaust itself, most of what Hitler did could be easily compared to the actions being taken by our own government right now. The bank bailouts, the quasi-nationalization of the auto industry, and the massive stimilus programs look very much like steps that Hitler took in his rise to power. (And the inflation that is bound to follow our unprecedented deficit spending may make the Weimar Deutschemark look like a stable currency!) The same could be said comparing today’s actions with those of Benito Mussolini. Yet the only lessons of history even mentioned today are based on complete mischaracterizatons of the actions of FDR. FDR, the president who turned a routine two year recession into a 15 year depression of unprecedented magnitude, borrowed many, perhaps most, of his ideas directly from Hitler and Mussolini. He openly admired both men, and envied the political power which they were able to use to intervene in their own economies. Most of those ideas were initially ruled unconstitutional here, until FDR succeeded in silencing the Supreme Court. But those same interventions are occurring here today, with barely a peep from the people or the media.

Three months ago, it would have been preposterous to suggest that the federal government would take control of the banks. Yet they have done so, and nobody said a word. The nationalization of the auto industry is taking place right before our eyes, and the best we can do is debate whether taxpayer dollars should be used to do it! Instead of defending our freedom, we appear to be clamoring for more regulation.

Apparently when we elected Barack Obama, we bought the “change” message hook, line and sinker. Somehow, despite all the lessons of history, the total and complete abject failure of socialism anywhere and everywhere it has ever been tried, we seem to think that The One can somehow turn that thoroughly discredited concept into a viable model for the American economy. I have great respect for Mr. Obama’s intelligence, but our complex economy is far beyond the comprehension of even the most brilliant central planners. Apparently our socialist schools have succeeded in their mission of whitewashing that incontrovertible (and inconvenient) truth.

I do not believe that we must go through an Even Greater Depression, but we are staring into the abyss. So at the risk of being redundant, I can only repeat, “Those who fail to learn from the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them.”