Annette John-Hall: Un-American? Well, let's see . . .

Suddenly, it appears I'm un-American.

I have a birth certificate and a U.S. passport, I love baseball, and, while I prefer peach cobbler, sometimes apple pie hits the spot. À la mode, of course.

And I'm rooting for the U.S. in the Olympics.

But apparently some of my readers think I'm a country-hater.

See, the last time I wrote about health care, I took that unpatriotic stance of urging citizens to speak up for themselves and, yes, I said that health care was a right, not a privilege.

You would have thought I'd called on insurgents to overturn the Constitution.

About a dozen self-professed constitutional scholars ordered me before the death panel.

Where in the Constitution, they demanded, does it say that health care is a right? And, by the way, how can you prove that the president is a citizen?

All those turncoat talking points were enough to make me ask for a morphine drip.

Well, let me tell you what's un-American:

Insurance companies allowing people to die because they refuse to approve procedures for patients with preexisting conditions.

On top of that, mega-monsters like Anthem Blue Cross of California having the nerve, in any economy, to try to increase premiums 39 percent after making $2.7 billion in profits.

And it's not just them. Health-care premiums have more than doubled in the last 10 years, growing three times faster than wages.

And it's un-American that Americans are left every day with daunting life-and-death choices and crippling financial ones.

Diane Connor, 42, knows all too well. The Germantown day-care owner underwent a double mastectomy for breast cancer in 2006.

When the state's budget impasse dried up funds for her centers, "I had to decide whether I was going to have health care or pay my staff," she says.

She paid her employees: "Morally, it was the right thing to do."

When her COBRA insurance coverage was finally reinstated, premiums cost $3,000 a month because of the dreaded "preexisting condition." Her policy expires in April.

"I don't know what's going to happen to me," she admits.

Through this crisis - and yes, we're in crisis mode - I keep wondering, where are the voices of people who have no health insurance and no voice?

And where are the voices of the reasonable folks, citizens who are less concerned about condemnation and more concerned with taking care of business?

Well, at least some of them will be in the nation's capital on Wednesday - the day before President Obama is set to host his health-care summit with Congress.

And they're walking the walk - and then some.

A small but vocal group of health-care reform activists took off Wednesday from Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church in Society Hill on a 135-mile, eight-day walk to Washington in honor of Melanie Shouse, a Missouri health-care activist and business owner who died of breast cancer at 41 after losing her own health-insurance battle.

Along the way, the walkers will make scheduled stops in Wilmington and Newark, Del., as well as several in Maryland.

"The idea is to send a message that we need health care," said Antoinette Kraus, 28, of Norristown, who organizes for the Pennsylvania Health Access Network. "While Congress is in Washington debating policy, people are suffering."

Kraus says she considers it a blessing that she's insured. She's walking for her mother, who has epilepsy and is just one layoff away being uninsured, and her sister, Fiona, who has been in and out of work and is $40,000 in debt because she can't afford insurance.

Meanwhile, back at home, members of the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia (2125 Chestnut St.) have come up with a novel idea: The proceeds from their annual rummage sale tomorrow will go toward providing health insurance for four of the seven church employees who don't have it.

"Throughout the year, we've been asked to reach deep and think about how we can provide health care," organizer Kim Balascak says. "It's a tragedy that we've got four employees working for the good of the church, and if something happens to them, they're not covered."

They surely can't wait for Congress to stop bickering, health-care polls to shift, or an act of God to bring everybody to their senses.

"You have to take personal responsibility. And that's what we're doing."