BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
Health is often out of an individual's control; like fires.

You will see that the other side of this argument makes a distinction between things that an individual can control and those he/she cannot. The argument is that fire and police protection are things beyond the control of individuals, but that healthcare is not. This argument is seriously flawed. Many healthcare issues are very much out of the control of individuals. Consider a bus accident. Many accidents are out of the control of individuals. While many accidents are a result of an individual being stupid or not being careful, so are many fires. There is no real distinction here. Either you should be opposed to fire/police protection and universal healthcare, or should support both. Picking one is a logical inconsistency.
Only the government can provide a coherent universal health care system.

Such a system is important from the standpoint of providing quality care, in that only a standardized system and unified database can enable doctors to treat any patient that comes in front of them. Privatized systems often see doctors unable to access the history and files of patients that come before them. The main reasons include the cost and complexity of unifying and standardizing a system as well as the lack of a private-industry interest in seeing such a system emerge.
Universal health care allows investments in longer-term patient relationships.

This happens because there is a long term relationship with the patient and the preservation of records has long term benefits. Investment in IT is one often cited example where health care providers in socialized systems have access to electronic records of patients tests online and where computer systems can check for example incompatible drug combinations and that drugs are administered to the right patient. Some for profit systems find this investment hard to justify because the provider-patient relationship is not guaranteed to last long enough to justify the investment.
Most uninsured simply can't afford it; it's not a choice

Kao-Ping Chua, "Arguments and counterarguments about universal health care". AMSA - "It's the uninsured's fault that they're uninsured. 8 out of 10 of the uninsured work or come from working families. They play by the rules, work hard just like the rest of Americans, and yet they can't get insurance from the employer because it's not offered, or they can't afford it if it is offered. Is that their fault?"
Health problems are more about individual choices than fires and crime.

While many people compare health care to police stations and fire stations, they are not the same services. Health care is largely about providing a service to the individual that compensates, often, for poor individual choices. Fire stations and police departments, on the other hand, provide services to a community and focus on protecting individuals against things they have no control over (crime and fires). The differences are very significant in regard to what the state is obligated to provide. The state is obligated to protect citizens from one-another. But, the state is not obligated to protect citizens from themselves. Universal health care is wrongheaded to the extent that it involves protecting individuals from themselves.
A mixed private-public system would preserve existing industries.

Any proposal to shift to a single-payer universal health care program from a private health care system involves destroying the private health care industry. This is a highly disruptive act that would involve massive job loss. The advantage of a mixed private-public universal health care system is that it is not as destructive and damaging in this way. It acknowledges the existence of a private health care industry and the need to preserve at least some of the interests of such a massive, and important, industry.
Public insurer can best negotiate down drug prices

Robert Reich. "Why critics of a public option for healthcare are wrong". Salon. June 24, 2009: "Private insurers say a public option would have an unfair advantage in achieving this goal. Being the one public plan, it will have large economies of scale that will enable it to negotiate more favorable terms with pharmaceutical companies and other providers. But why, exactly, is this unfair? Isn't the whole point of cost containment to provide the public with healthcare on more favorable terms? If the public plan negotiates better terms -- thereby demonstrating that drug companies and other providers can meet them -- private plans could seek similar deals."
Public insurance offers an option to uninsured and struggling

Richard Kirsch, National Campaign Manager for Health Care for America Now! "Three Reasons for the Choice of a Public Health Insurance Plan". May 15, 2009: "Sure, some people are satisfied with their current health insurance. But the millions of Americans who are tired of increasing costs and decreasing benefits should have the chance to opt into a program that will offer affordable, quality care, says Health Care for America Now's Richard Kirsch."
Public insurance is public-private hybrid, not socialized medicine

Jacob S. Hacker, Ph.D. "The case for public plan choice in national health reform". Institute for America's Future: "[Public option] is not an argument for a universal Medicare program, but instead for a “hybrid” approach that builds on the best elements of the present system—large group plans in the public and private sectors—while putting in place a new means by which those without access to secure workplace insurance can choose among health plans that provide strong guarantees of quality, affordable coverage."
Nobody will be forced into public insurance; it's an option

"Keeping Them Honest". New York Times. June 5, 2009: "Now nobody is proposing that Americans be forced to get their insurance from the government. The 'public option,' if it materializes, will be just that — an option Americans can choose. And the reason for providing this option was clearly laid out in Mr. Obama’s letter: It will give Americans 'a better range of choices, make the health care market more competitive, and keep the insurance companies honest.'"
Public insurance protects uninsured from calamity

2009 Statement by the American Nurses Association: "A public health insurance plan would expand choices and help protect against potential economic calamity for individuals or families who are not satisfied with their current health coverage, have difficulty paying for their health care, or cannot find affordable coverage."[8] Indeed, health care is a leading cause of bankruptcy, which severely damages an individuals ability to engage productively in the economy. A public plan will nearly eliminate bankruptcies resulting from being uninsured, subsequently freeing individuals to productively add value in the economy.
Private insurers ration as-much or more than public insurance.

Critics frequently argue that government-run health care involves the government "rationing" health care. Yet, private insurance companies "ration" to an even greater extent by denying claims and developing methods for maximize profits, and minimize outlays to those they are insuring. "Rationing" in this sense is the core businesses model of insurance companies. How can a government-run insurance option be any worse than this, particularly when it does not have the for-profit motive, so will offer as much health care to as many people as possible?
Choosing between complicated health insurance plans is difficult

John Holahan and Linda Blumberg. "Is the Public Plan Option a Necessary Part of Health Reform?" Urban Institute: "there is considerable variation in health insurance products sold, and consumers have great difficulty in making price and quality comparisons. This is especially true in the private nongroup insurance market, but is increasingly true in commercial group insurance as well. [...] The products offered by sellers in insurance and hospital markets are complex and difficult to understand and evaluate. It is almost impossible to compare prices of either insurance products or services provided by hospitals and other health providers." [The status quo, therefore, offers little "reasoned choice". Simple public insurance would make it easier on consumers.]
Expensive public insurance option would worsen national debt

Karl Rove. "How to Stop Socialized Health Care" Wall Street Journal. June 11, 2009: "the public option is far too expensive. The cost of Medicare -- the purest form of a government-run 'public choice' for seniors -- will start exceeding its payroll-tax 'trust fund' in 2017. The Obama administration estimates its health reforms will cost as much as $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years. It is no coincidence the Obama budget nearly triples the national debt over that same period. [...] Medicare and Medicaid cost much more than estimated when they were adopted. One reason is there's no competition for these government-run insurance programs. In the same way, Americans can expect a public option to cost far more than the Obama administration's rosy estimates."
US already has public-private health insurance hybrids

Tom Daschle. "A public plan will reduce costs and improve access". Newsweek. May 2, 2009: "A growing number of Americans already get their health care from a public plan, including Medicare, Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Plan (the Department of Veterans Affairs, of course, also provides benefits). There are public-private hybrids as well, like state employee health plans where the government assumes the risk and insurance companies are responsible for the management. The use of a public plan as it is currently proposed is simply an extension of what we have already done in public policy during the last 50 years. We just have to circle the bases." This should dampen concerns that a public plan is somehow "foreign", and a dramatic attempt to socialize medicine.
Private insurers limit choice of doctors as much as public insurance

Signe Wilkinson. "Unhealthy arguments against public option" Philadelphia Daily News. July 14, 2009: "Opponents of a public option say it will deny Americans the right to choose their own doctors. It's true that some doctors and dentists will choose not to participate in a government-run plan. But many private insurance plans already restrict your choice of doctors by refusing to pay for treatment provided 'out of network.'"
Efforts to create a public-private insurance hybrid are in good faith.

There is no reason to believe that the intentions of those that are advocating for a public option are bent on destroying the insurance industry and creating a single-payer system. It is true that there are many advocates of a pure single-payer system, but there are just as many advocates of a hybrid system. Those that propose such a hybrid - through a public option - should be taken on their word, instead of called liars with a hidden agenda.
Private insurers offer sufficient choices

Karl Rove. "How to Stop Socialized Health Care" Wall Street Journal. June 11, 2009: "Advocates say a government-run insurance program is needed to provide competition for private health insurance. But 1,300 companies sell health insurance plans. That's competition [and choice] enough. The results of robust private competition to provide the Medicare drug benefit underscore this. When it was approved, the Congressional Budget Office estimated it would cost $74 billion a year by 2008. Nearly 100 providers deliver the drug benefit, competing on better benefits, more choices, and lower prices. So the actual cost was $44 billion in 2008 -- nearly 41% less than predicted. No government plan was needed to guarantee competition's benefits."
Co-ops are not government-run like public insurance

"Cooperatives Being Pushed as an Alternative to a Government Plan". Washington Post. August 18, 2009: "As prospects fade for a public, or government-run, option as part of health-care reform, key senators are considering another model to create competition for private insurers: member-owned, nonprofit health cooperatives. [...] Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), the chief advocate for including cooperatives in reform legislation, has cited examples as disparate as the Land O'Lakes dairy concern, rural electricity cooperatives and Ace Hardware. [...] But so far, cooperatives have been defined in the health-care debate primarily in terms of what they are not: They would not be run by the government. [...] That may make the cooperatives more politically palatable to conservatives, as well as to some Democrats such as Conrad, who fear that the public option may be a bridge too far."
Public insurance will be used excessively at greater cost

Walton J. Francis. "Why a new public plan will not improve American health care". Heritage Foundation. May 5, 2009: "Excess Use. Then there is the matter of managing patient care to improve outcomes and reduce costs. Medicare spends zero on this function.[31] Private plans spend around 5 percent in administrative costs to manage care (second surgical opinions, pre-certification for hospital stays, and the review of preferred provider outcomes, etc.) and often save around 10 percent in reduced use of health care ser vices. Medicare's administrative costs look better arithmetically because the denominator is higher and the numerator is lower, but the advantage is again entirely illusory—$100 in frugal care costs the private plan $16 (the previous $11 plus $5), while Medicare is spending $120 and wasting $20—$10 on fraud and $10 on overuse in addition to the $5 it spends on bill paying. Again, the worse the actual performance, the better Medicare's administrative costs appear as a percentage of total spending."
Public health insurance creates two-tiered system (choice)

Ronald Bailey. "The beginning of the end of private health insurance". Reason. June 9, 2009: "The best result of creating a parallel public insurance scheme is that the United States would end up with an explicit two-tier medical system in which privately insured Americans have better access to better medical care. Such two-tier health care systems already exist in countries with national health care schemes such as the United Kingdom and Germany. In the United Kingdom, more and more Britons are opting for private health insurance instead of remaining with that country's National Health Service. Privately insured Americans would get higher quality health care, but because the market for medical innovation would be smaller, everybody will get worse care than they would otherwise have received had most health care not been nationalized."
Divisions on public vs. private healthcare suggests a hybrid

Jacob Hacker. "The case for public plan". The Institute for America's Future: "Perhaps that is why Americans have long been strongly supportive of public-private hybrids in health care, believing that neither the government nor private insurance should be the sole source of coverage in a reformed system. In polls, a Medicare-like program covering all Americans beats the current system hands down. Yet Americans are even more receptive toward a mandate on employers to provide coverage.78 Historically, Americans have been deeply divided about their preferred approach to expanding health insurance. Although repeated surveys find a majority endorsing “national health insurance” for most of the second half of the twentieth century, when asked explicitly, Americans split evenly between those who favor administration of insurance benefits by government and those who prefer subsidies for private insurers.79 Thus, Americans seem to desire a combination of both private employment-based coverage and expanded public programs."
Public insurance option will increase taxes, drag-down economy

Karl Rove. "How to Stop Socialized Health Care" Wall Street Journal. June 11, 2009: "Who covers the rest? Government passes the bill for the outstanding balance to providers and families not covered by government programs. This cost-shifting amounts to a forced subsidy. Families pay about $1,800 more a year for someone else's health care as a result, according to a recent study by Milliman Inc. It's also why many doctors limit how many Medicare patients they take: They can afford only so much charity care."
Public option is really about making way for a single-payer system

Gregory Mankiw. "The pitfalls of the public option". New York Times. June 27, 2009: "the public plan would likely undercut private firms and get an undue share of the market. [...] President Obama might not be disappointed if that turned out to be the case. During the presidential campaign, he said, 'If I were designing a system from scratch, I would probably go ahead with a single-payer system.'"
Public insurance leads to socialized medicine, rationing, long-lines

Dr. Donald J. Palmisano, a leading surgeon and former president of the AMA who heads the physicians group Coalition to Protect Patients' Rights: "The government takeover of the practice of medicine [starting with a public insurance program] will destroy the private health insurance companies, and will result in rationing, long lines, and loss of access to physicians in the patient hour of need."[5]
Public insurance stimulates competition in a non-competitive industry

John Holahan and Linda Blumberg. "Is the Public Plan Option a Necessary Part of Health Reform?" Urban Institute: "The arguments around the public plan too often ignore what we believe is the central reason for including a public plan as a component of reform: that health insurance markets today, by and large, are simply not competitive. And as such, these markets are not providing the benefits one would expect from competition, including efficient operations and consequent control over health care costs."
Medicare out-performs private insurance, is a model for public insurance

Jacob Hacker. "The case for public plan". The Institute for America's Future: "The case made in this brief is that this menu of health plans must include a good public plan modeled after Medicare if the broad goals of reform—universal insurance and improved value—are to be achieved. [...] First, public insurance has a better track record than private insurance when it comes to reining in costs while preserving access. By way of illustration, between 1997 and 2006, health spending per enrollee (for comparable benefits) grew at 4.6 percent a year under Medicare, compared with 7.3 percent a year under private health insurance. At the same time, Medicare has maintained high levels of provider participation and patient access to care. [...] Medicare has proven superior at cost control not just to health plans in the private sector, but also to private plans that contract with the federal government, such as those offered through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP)—suggesting that public insurance can outperform private plans even in the context of insurance reforms."
Costs of Medicare/Medicaid show public insurance waste

Gregory Mankiw. "The pitfalls of the public option" New York Times. June 27, 2009: "The largest existing public health programs — Medicare and Medicaid — are the main reason that the government’s long-term finances are in shambles. True, Medicare’s administrative costs are low, but it is easy to keep those costs contained when a system merely writes checks without expending the resources to control wasteful medical spending."
US private insurance is inferior to foreign public-private hybrids

Paul Waldman. "The Public Option and the Hope of Health Care Reform". American Prospect. December 23, 2008: "If we're smart and lucky, we might end up with a system resembling the one they have in France (rated by the World Health Organization as the world's best), where basic health insurance is provided by the government, but most people have supplemental private insurance to fill in the gaps in coverage. [...] That kind of hybrid system would still allow 'choice,', yet cover everyone and hold down costs."
Progress with public plan is more important than "competition"

Insuring that over 40 million Americans have health insurance is much more important than the ideological notion of "fair competition". This is not to concede that a public plan is unfair, but rather to say that the whole debate over a "level playing field" misses the point that this is primarily an issue about insuring millions of uninsured individuals, by whatever means possible. These individuals need health insurance more than the health care industry needs a level playing field to continue its high profits.
Public option is better way to universal care than mandates

Robert Creamer. "Three Reasons Why a Strong Public Option is Likely to be Part of Health Insurance Reform" Huffington Post. August 18, 2009: "most major health insurance markets are dominated by two or three companies so there is no real competition -particularly with respect to price. [...] Once everyone is required [by mandates] to buy insurance, the companies can have a field day raising prices and profits using the government to guarantee they are paid - either through subsidies or the imposition of fines. You can see why, from an insurance company perspective, this would be a great deal."
Government will not favor public insurer over private insurers

John Holahan and Linda Blumberg. "Is the Public Plan Option a Necessary Part of Health Reform?" Urban Institute: "[one argument against the public option] is that the public plan will always be favored—that there is no way that Congress would let the public plan fail and would find ways to tilt the playing field in its favor, providing it with advantages not afforded private plans. However, experience with the Medicare program does not support this concern. Indications from the Medicare Advantage experience suggest that, if anything, private plans would most likely be favored over a public plan. For example, Medicare Advantage plans are paid percent more than Medicare fee-for-service in 2009 for the average beneficiary, clear evidence that traditional Medicare has not always been favored (MedPAC 2009)."
Mandates wrongly give insurers millions of new customers

Robert Creamer. "Three Reasons Why a Strong Public Option is Likely to be Part of Health Insurance Reform" Huffington Post. August 18, 2009: "Once everyone is required [by mandates] to buy insurance, the companies can have a field day raising prices and profits using the government to guarantee they are paid - either through subsidies or the imposition of fines. You can see why, from an insurance company perspective, this would be a great deal. But from the point of view of the taxpayers - and the insurance ratepayers - it would be a disaster. It would be like giving the insurance companies a license to take your money - with no regulation - all enforced by government edict."
Private insurance puts profit first; public insurance puts health first

Richard Kirsch, National Campaign Manager for Health Care for America Now! "Three Reasons for the Choice of a Public Health Insurance Plan". May 15, 2009: "Putting you first. [...] The mission of health insurance companies is a healthy bottom line, not your health. That’s why health insurers deny care to people with pre-existing conditions, charge more if you have any history of even minor health problems and deny and delay approving care. [...] The mission of a public health insurance company will be your health, not the financial health of stockholders. A public health insurance company won’t have multi-million dollar executives with corporate jets. It won’t have to please Wall Street financial analysts. It will have a mandate to provide health care, from preventive care through care for serious and chronic illnesses. And a public insurance plan will invest in health care in our communities."