ANSWER: It depends on the individual you ask. Some think a public option is necessary, where others think that it infringes on personal rights. No definite answer can be given.
Yes, because currently
45,000 people die each year in the US due to a lack of health care insurance. See the link below to a Reuters news report from Sept. 2009 about a Harvard study that links
one death every twelve minutes directly to the lack of health care insurance and quality health care. According to Reuters:
The Harvard study, funded by a federal research grant, was published in the online edition of the American Journal of Public Health. It was released by Physicians for a National Health Program, which favors government-backed or "single-payer" health insurance.
"We're losing more Americans every day because of inaction ... than drunk driving and homicide combined," Dr. David Himmelstein, a co-author of the study and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, said in an interview with Reuters.
There is always a slant these days:
""That "Harvard study," which the CBS Evening News promoted two months ago, was really produced by the Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), a left-wing advocacy group which touts itself as "the only national physician organization in the United States dedicated exclusively to implementing a single-payer national health program." Study co-author Dr. Steffie Woolhandler of PNHP is one of five signers of an "Open Letter to President Obama to Support Single-Payer Health Care." "
Looks like the fox is guarding the hen house...