“We must act now. It’s now or never.”

We’ve been hearing some of these phrases a little too much lately. Some argue that unless America does something soon to provide universal access to insurance, the financial state of the nation will crumble immediately. And therefore they tell us we need to just pass a bill to offer a public option for virtually everyone. The view is — forget about reading the whole bill, just pass something. Anything.

The belief that doing something is always better than doing nothing at all is faulty. And the argument that President Obama is the only one who’s introduced a health care plan is absolutely false.

The government has taken control of the car company and the financial sector, and now Obama wants it to grab control of the health care industry, the one sector that continues to grow unabated despite the economic crisis. And although Obama warns that health care is a large financial problem, it’s not nearly as large a financial problem as social security, Medicare and Medicaid have caused, incidentally government run programs. And although the program would basically force patients to pay for more coverage, congressmen and senators would be exempt, according to the Affordable Health Choices Act.

Obama has already shown that he prefers attorneys over doctors — he’s already stated that he doesn’t support lawsuit caps on malpractice insurance. Lawyers 1. Doctors, 0.

If anyone deserves a lucrative paycheck, it’s someone who saves lives. If a doctor or surgeon saves your life or the life of a loved one, we couldn’t begin to place a price tag on his or her work. The value of a human life isn’t limited to $1 million or $2 million, so we’re forced to place a cap on what a doctor does right. So why can’t we put a cap on a doctor’s mistake?

The problem with many Americans is that they have an entitlement mentality, and many politicians are appealing to that mentality. We don’t balk at the cost of a big-screen TV; we don’t hesitate to spend thousands of dollars on junk food; and most of us have satellite or cable. So why should health care be “free?”

We somehow believe we should be able to make our lives bullet proof from the ills of the world, and we do that by trying to find an insurance policy for every possible thing that could go wrong.

And so health care has come to be viewed as a right and not a privilege.

Tell that to someone in Afghanistan, Iraq, or sometimes even first-world countries such as Italy or Canada, where they do not have access to the medical system America has. Hopefully we don’t have such an elite mentality that we believe we deserve good health care, just because we were born in America.

Is health care in America expensive? Yes. Is it far from perfect? Absolutely. Are hospitals and doctors’ offices full of capitalists who try to make as much money as possible? Sure, but the tyrants in history haven’t come from hospitals or the private sector, they’ve come from tyrannical rulers. So if we should beware of anyone, it should be the government.

Those who believe that America has a terrible health care system need to spend time in a European country. We would be hard pressed to find a country with as good of system that we have.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi would agree — when he needed surgery, he came to America. Unfortunately for most of the citizens of his country, they’re not able to afford such a luxury. Although private doctors do exist in Italy, most Italians can’t afford them because their taxes are paying for the poorly run public health care system.

America has built its success through innovation. If we don’t like our system, we shouldn’t copy what Europe and Canada have done.

We must find our own way, and we must encourage innovation instead of adding a “free,” low quality option.