It really is about people.

In the maelstrom of rhetoric and protests, claims and counterclaims, assertions and refutations concerning the proposed health care reform, it seems one thing has been lost. People in our country live and die without adequate health care and health insurance and without the reasonable chance to get either.

60 Minutes has run stories of health care professionals who used to go to developing countries to give health care. Those health care professionals now run clinics in America because the need is so great here. News stories abound about the impact on health care costs for all Americans because of uninsured people seeking treatment in hospital ER's since that is the only option available to them. Other stories tell of people who lose coverage or are denied treatment options because of the dictates of the insurance companies.

This may all be theoretical to most of us because we may not know someone who has suffered in this way. On the Ethics Daily website (www.ethicsdaily.com), Jan Chapman tells the story of someone she knew, 25 y.o. Gaby Duffy who died. In Ms. Chapman's words:

Gaby saw her last sunset on May 9. She died in an Ottawa, Ill., hospital, where she'd taken herself after several days of high fever that she had tried to beat without the doctors she could not afford.

Gaby had no health insurance.

By the time she got to the Ottawa Regional Hospital and Healthcare Center on May 7, she had already lost the time needed to diagnosis and treat the fever. Tests were run to no good conclusion. On Saturday evening, after a good visit with her best friend, Gaby suffered an acute symptomatic seizure and died.

She was 25.

Would her survival been guaranteed if she had health insurance? Maybe not; we will never know. We do know she did not seek medical help until it was too late because she could not afford medical help because she had no coverage.

Should this happen in our country? Should young people and old people, children and senior adults, males and females, be denied medical help because they have no way to pay a doctor or their health coverage carrier - not a doctor - tells them they do not need a procedure or a medicine?

Do we have any responsibility for our sisters and brothers? Am I my sisters and brothers keeper?