REP. PAUL RYAN NOT SHRUGGING AT HEALTH CARE

Ayn Rand may have been an atheist but her 1957 novel, "Atlas Shrugged" has aged like a fine wine. It lays out in no uncertain terms what happens when power-hungry bureaucrats, both government and corporate, feel threatened by capitalism and innovation - they squash it. What makes the novel so powerful is that it also lays out what happens when those bureaucrats ultimately get their way.

That's why it is refreshing to see a politician in the U.S. Congress - Paul Ryan (R-WI) - giving each member of his staff a copy of the book. If he truly embraces the principles relative to the power of the individual that are in that novel, it is a strong statement indeed. It's the stuff of paradigm shifts if in the right hands. Then again, we are talking about politicians and the novel is an exhaustive 1000+ pages. Politicians deal in perception and 'Atlas Shrugged' has become a Tea Party favorite. Reading the "Tea Leaves" comes natural for politicians.

Skepticism is high when it comes to all things Washington, D.C. these days. Sorry. That said, the American Thinker has a piece that seems to indicate Ryan might just be the real deal, pointing to his performance at the health care summit last month:

At the health care summit, he was a man among boys, firing broadsides at the health care reform bill that hit their target with devastating accuracy. Obama didn't even bother to try and counter the points Ryan made. In 11 minutes, he destroyed the Democrats' talking points - and they knew it.

His own health care reform bill, The Patient's Choice Act , was buried by House Democrats who refused to even consider most of the common sense, market oriented alternatives he was promoting. In fact, the president and the Democrats pretended that the bill wasn't even offered, referring constantly to the GOP having "no new ideas" about reform when a 248 page bill was staring them in the face, just waiting for the opposition to acknowledge its existence.

For more on Ryan, he's got an op-ed in the Washington Post. He certainly talks like he and his staff have ingested the central theme in 'Atlas Shrugged':

Rather than tackle the drivers of health inflation, the legislation chases the ever-increasing premiums with huge new subsidies. Already, Washington has no idea how to pay for the unfunded promises in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security -- and creating this new entitlement would accelerate our path to fiscal ruin. When you strip away the double-counting, expose the hidden costs that must be funded and look at the price tag when the legislation is fully implemented, the claims of deficit reduction are as hollow as claims of cost containment.

Ryan seems to get it and as the American Thinker points out, he's a younger member of Congress who argues the conservative viewpoint on this matter better than most of its senior members.

Read Ryan's op-ed here.