Just like police and fire protection

Just like police and fire protection, K-12 education, and highways, and maybe more so, in the 21^st century health care is a basic right. (Some will disagree, and would even charge per fire or per crime one is a victim of.) It is just what I believe and what the majority in the US believes. Providing all these services is not just for the individual but benefits the community as a whole. Nations without roads and schooling have lousy economies. Sick people cannot work productively and infect others.

I am a leftie Democrat but, frankly, I haven't seen a strong case for a public option,—so long as private insurers are regulated as tightly as, say, a gas utility. They need to have no incentive to refuse payment for existing conditions or treatments they did not invent—so long as they pay for health care and not just catastrophe care.

Getting to such a plan as law is up to the all the Democrats plus one or two Republicans, of a full range of ideologies. The GOP has no role. They have left the playing field and gotten up into the stands as hecklers. The President and the Democratic leadership should ignore their caterwauling. Let's get on with crafting a way to deliver health care to everyone.