Ah, but Betsi, we have already given a lot of health care over to “those people” in the form of Medicare. We already have a government run health insurance program that people are overwhelmingly happy with. 
And yes, everyone’s needs are different, but everyone’s right’s should be the same. People need to ride the bus to different places, but everyone should have the right to sit at the front on the bus. 
You are right that there will always be some discrimination based on who actually runs a program. But at least with a public program there is a legal and democratic avenue for redress.  With private charity, discrimination on who to provide services for is perfectly legal. Private charities can refuse service to anyone for any reason, or for example, make people sit through sermons before providing services.
My main point is that if we truly care about the common good, we would develop public policy to address it for everyone.  Relying on charity for things like health-care is turning our back on the problem as a society, because charity is never enough to ensure universal coverage.

Forget it, Dan.  It’s Chinatown.  People don’t care.  They say they care, but they really don’t.  They can’t sacrifice.  Not really.  It’s like the rich young ruler in the New Testament.  He couldn’t bear to let go of what he owned. 
And it is racism, just as the Chief was a hugely racist image.  People never accepted that they had a single racist bone in their bodies.  But they do.   Bush and gang did bad stuff.  Obama and gang are hated simply for what they are.  You only have to listen to five minutes of Glenn Beck to understand that.  You’re never going to convince people to change their minds.
Forget it, Jake.  It’s the system.  It’s Capitalism.

Betsi was put on hold a couple of times to the unemployment office, so she’s willing to let millions of her countrymen go without health care.  I’ve heard similar rationalizations again and again.  No wonder that in Europe and Canada and every developed country they just think we are insane, deluded, and cruel.
I haven’t had health insurance in years.  I was denied for a pre-existing condition that has since been shown not to exist at all.  So I’m just waiting for the government plan to kick in when I’m 65.

G: your criticism of Betsi aims at the wrong target. Nothing she writes seeks to deny health care.
 
Doctors, nurses and lab analysts do health care. Form-filers do paperwork.
 
For some reason the government seeks to create a health insurance bureaucracy. Why not just provide health care?
 
“Single payer” is fine, if awkwardly worded. Allow competition from anyone who thinks s/he can compete against a monolith. 
 
But “public option” just means an insurance organization competing with other insurance organizations. Whatever competition/savings that might create, it’s still just middle men ... bureaucrats. Not one of them heals any body.
 
The insurance business is about actuarial likelihoods. For our purposes (charitable or just) does it matter whether only 1 in 300,000 people gets a certain disease? Or is it important that each person who gets the disease receives medical care?
 
Dan, I agree with you if
 
“public policy should dictate that you can’t discriminate against anyone based on political beliefs, religion, skin color, sexual orientation, personality defects”
 
intended to say
 
“universal health care should not be withheld from anyone based on political beliefs, religion, skin color, sexual orientation, personality defects”
 
Political beliefs, religion and personality defects are excellent reasons to discriminate.
 
I assume every single person who reads this column—and any opinion column—desires to gather information/tools for use in making discriminating choices.

As I said, I’m not arguing this any more.  And I agree, Rob, that nothing Betsi said “seeks to deny health care.“  But it is the net effect.  Nobody will claim they’re against health care, just as nobody wanted to deny black people equal rights in the 60s.  They just wanted to wait a little bit longer.

1. No one needs health insurance.
 
2. Everyone needs health care.
 
 
But, by supporting the concept of “reform” no matter the fine print, here’s what we’ve come to: the very worst possible “solution.“

Well of course it is societal selfishness, cruel.  48 million people can’t afford health insurance. The people against reform say they don’t want to spend money on the problem, or they tell us their fear of government is so irrational that they’d rather not have reform than allow even a watered-down medicare-like insurance option.
 
What those against reform have not done is come up with a plan that covers everyone. They have not come up with a plan where people don’t die or go bankrupt because they get sick with curable ailments. Every other industrial nation in the world has managed to do this.
 
Absolutely it is societal selfishness that has got us here, and it’s what keeps us stuck in the mud trying to go forward.

I have hated the idea of required health insurance since I first heard of it.  And being fined for not having it is capitalist madness.  I think health care may indeed be Obama’s Waterloo, as the hateful Republicans gleefully hoped.  But I still have hope.  I still want to imagine that Obama is working it somehow.  Certainly, he has put his eggs in this basket and I wish him well.  Something bad may pass in order that something better may evolve from it. 
 
I remember the civil rights battles of the 60s.  I remember how people right here in central Illinois resisted Martin Luther King, called him a communist, and—never claiming to be in any way at all racist—denied equal rights because it was “too soon” and people—other people, of course, not themselves—weren’t ready.  This angry and heated battle over health care indeed strikes me as much the same in many ways and with a class and race element that cannot be denied, too.
And because I earn and have so incredibly little money—none, really, I live on air like the lilies of the field—it is completely out of the question that I could purchase health insurance, no matter how little it costs.  If that is the plan that is passed, I am sure there will be a special provision for people who earn as little as I do.  I have not much to either gain or lose by this battle. I just believe it is right for a nation as rich as this one to be able to provide for the health of its citizens.
At least, that is what Obama claims he is trying to do.  The Republicans never came within a country mile of making any such claim.  They’re all about profit and power and always have been.