South Carolina Republican Rep. Joe Wilson shouted “You lie!” during President Obama’s health care speech to Congress on Wednesday.  Wilson’s outburst came when Obama denied that his proposed health care legislation would provide free health coverage to illegal immigrants.

Obama immediately stopped his speech and glared at the heckler, as if Wilson were an insolent child.  “That’s not true,” Obama coolly responded.  CNN Fact check: Will reform plan cover illegal immigrants?

Seated behind Obama, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appeared shocked (though she often has that deer-in-the-headlights look) and Vice President Joe Biden looked down and shook his head (probably glad that for once he wasn’t the one sticking foot-in-mouth).  Loud boos echoed through the chamber.

After the President’s speech, members of both parties condemned the heckling.  Wilson issued a statement apologizing for his outburst.  “This evening, I let my emotions get the best of me when listening to the president’s remarks regarding the coverage of illegal immigrants in the health care bill,” his statement said.  “While I disagree with the president’s statement, my comments were inappropriate and regrettable.  I extend sincere apologies to the president for this lack of civility.”

Wilson also called the White House to apologize.  Obama gave him the brush off, but Wilson spoke with Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who accepted the apology on the president’s behalf.  “We can disagree without being disagreeable,” Emanuel said to Wilson.  “That was the point of the president’s speech.”  That’s obviously a lesson that neither side of the aisle has ever learned.

So where the heckler was watchdog Wilson when George W. Bush was blindly leading our country into a trillion dollar war with Iraq?  Obviously the Bush administration’s claim of “weapons of mass destruction in Iraq” turned out to be one of the biggest and most expensive political untruths in history.  For the money we’ve spent on Iraq, we could have funded the gold-plated version of health care reform and covered every U.S. citizen.  But now we are so strapped for cash that our Congress is likely once again to do nothing and sweep this massive problem under the rug.

Story at CNN

A new Facebook poll asks its users if they want a Government run healthcare system. Overwhelmingly, the results say No.

And I agree, who wants our government to completely run health care?  About the only thing our federal government does well is spend our money and wage war. 

What I don’t understand is that none of the viable health care reform proposals (on either side of the political aisle) have the government actually running health care, i.e., the so-called “single payer system” similar to the U.K.  Even the most liberal of the reform plans now under serious consideration involve only a government run insurance pool that supplements private insurance. 

The term “government run healthcare” is a scare tactic by opponents who want to ensure that we continue to do nothing.  Which our Congress is really good at, as they’ve ignored this problem for decades.

But we must do something.  I have too many friends with families and no health insurance because they have pre-existing health conditions, work for small companies, or are unemployed.  We all end paying for them anyway — through indigent care and skyrocketing health care costs — so why not figure out how to cover them legitimately?

The duty of the government is to provide essential services to its citizens that the citizens or private enterprise cannot adequately provide themselves.  Services such as military, police, fire, social security, indigent welfare, etc.  Given there are still millions of Americans without health insurance, and those lucky enough to have good health insurance face continually skyrocketing costs, it’s obvious that private enterprise cannot do this job alone.

From Now I Don’t Want to Get Off On a Rant Here