Rubma, you are young and idealistic. I know plenty of people who took responsibility for their own health only to find they fell victim to disease anyway.

One was a MSgt I worked with in Italy. He practiced free-radical Wednesday and colonic cleansing, walked religiously (had to leave work early every day to do it!) and had great plans (which he was kind enough to share with us unwashed masses) about retiring to his Greek island home and lying on the beach all day. He's now a GS in Stuttgart. He needed the health insurance and his Greek wife dumped him and her family lives in the beach house.

You can plan all you like, but it doesn't always turn out the way you plan. Not all diseases are controllable by diet and exercise.

So what happens to the person who tests positive for a cancer gene and loses his/her health insurance? Are they just supposed to crawl away and wait to die or appeal to some Baptist charity? I go to school with a woman whose family has a history of breast cancer. She wants to be tested but was advised by her doctor that if she has the genetic marker she will likely lose her health care coverage.

When the worry about what will happen to oneself or one's family is allievated by health care for all, we free people up to achieve, not live in fear.

Please, realize it's not as easy as you believe.