"Okay then, if you want to make that distinction, if you're not alive then you don't need health insurance. Okay?"
The Supreme Court recently had something so say about the retardedness of that logic. States are different from the Government, and regulating an optional activity (you can live w/o a car) and a non-optional activity (you can't live w/o living) are two different things.
"Agree that it'll be better once we get rid of the health insurance companies altogether."
Why? I don't want government-provided healthcare any more than I want to eat in a government-provided cafeteria.
I pay for my own health care (HSA + out of pocket until I hit a deductable). I buy insurance for the same reason ANYONE buys ANY KIND of insurance: evaluating the risk, financial coverage for catastrophic incidents is more valuable to me than the average financial loss I'm expecting to take (by paying into a pool regardless of use). I expect the insurance company to come out ahead because I expect my insurance company to be solvent enough to pay for my needs under the policy if/when I need it to.