By Debbie Schlussel

On Friday Morning, I showed you video of Mike Sola telling off Hezbollah’s Congressman, John Dingell, about his absurd ObamaCare bill.  Sola was the man whose son was in a wheelchair and has cerebral palsy.

Today, there’s a nice interview with him in the Detroit Free Press.  I admire this man’s courage (even with police sicced on him by Dingell), and the fact that he is honest.  He admits that the health insurance he has (and that most people have) is bad, but notes–as all of us opposed to ObamaCare know–that government health care is far worse.  He shouldn’t be sorry he went to the event.  He did us all a service.

Sitting in his home in semirural Washtenaw County, Sola was calm and reflective. He rubbed his head with his ham-like hands. Since the hearing, he’s gotten some hang-up calls. His mailbox was damaged during the weekend. He has heard some noises at night and is not sleeping well.

“I’m so sorry I went to that thing,” he said. “I had no intention of confronting the man.”

Yet Sola has no second thoughts about the proposed legislation. He hates it, and he said he believes Americans need to stand up and say so.

“If somebody doesn’t speak up, these clowns are going to pass it,” Sola said. . . .

“I have a question that’s for this young man,” Sola thundered at the meeting, standing a few feet from Dingell and pointing at his son, 36-year-old Scott, who suffers from cerebral palsy and was sitting in a wheelchair.

“Go sit down,” Dingell told him amid jeers from the audience.

Romulus police escorted Sola from the meeting, but they did not arrest him. He said the cops seemed sympathetic.

Sola, a Croatian immigrant who came to the United States with his family in 1950, insists he belongs to no group and decided to attend the town hall-style meeting on his own. A political independent who describes himself as an unapologetic patriot, he said has no beef against Dingell generally, and has voted for him at times.

Pretty decent guy,” Sola said. “I don’t think he is an extremist.”

Ah, I knew there had to be a chink in his armor. Sorry, but Dingell is NOT a decent guy. And he IS an extremist, who sides with Hezbollah, the terrorist group that murdered our Marines and embassy officials, Navy diver Robert Stethem, Col. William R. “Rich” Higgins, and CIA Attache William Buckley in cold blood.

Sola worries what would happen to his son.

Sola said he “boiled over” at the meeting when he saw a woman, who appeared to be disabled but also to be supporting Dingell. Sola said he thought she was being used.

Sola is especially angry that some Democrats, he said, have referred to protesters around the county as thugs.

While some activists have acknowledged they urged opponents to attend Thursday’s meeting, Sola called the crowd members “mom and pop America.”

He added: “This was Americans saying, ‘What the hell are you doing?’

Sola, 64, said he has undergone back surgery and lung-cancer surgery and has battled prostate cancer. Most recently, he had a colon-cancer scare. And each time, he said he believes he received top-notch care from sympathetic doctors.

“American health care is the best in the world,” Sola said. “Where is Teddy Kennedy going for treatment? This country. Where is Chris Dodd going for prostate cancer treatment? This country. Where do the Arab sheikhs go for treatment? This country.”

Sola, a salesman, has his health insurance through his company, which he declined to name. He said he pays 30% of the monthly premiums, and by the end of 2009 will have paid $8,000 in out-of-pocket expenses over the past two years.

And here’s the money quote:

“I have crappy insurance,” he said. “But I’ll keep it over government insurance any day. I’ll gladly pay what I pay and not take Obama’s insurance — even if it was zero.”

Amen. We really do need to return to the days of patient paying doctor out-of-pocket for service without an insurance middle-man.

But until we get there, what we have now is far better than statist healthcare.