You and I agree on this, so don't blow a gasket. You don't want to pay for me. I don't want to pay for you. We both know that medical expenses are real and we've both taken responsibility for that.
I do have insurance (as I clearly stated), it does cover me fully if something catastrophic happens, and I can afford my deductible. Don't you think I considered the numbers before I signed up? I'm approaching 50 and there are significant medical bills in my near future. I've planned for them.
And yes I do pay, indirectly through my employer. I don't pay my premiums out of pocket, I pay them with my own sweat. It's not free and it's not cheap. And I still don't benefit from those premiums (even though they are credited to me as a taxable benefit), it all goes to paying other people's bills.
Nor am I advocating that people not buy insurance. I'm saying the PPACA is a loser's game, and it doesn't surprise me when people opt out. They didn't have insurance before for a reason; why would they want it now? There's no benefit. The system is broken, and Obamacare doesn't fix it, it only makes the brokenness permanent and rigs the game to ensure that you and I keep on paying for everyone else, like we have been all along. And anyone who buys insurance stops being a receiver and starts being a giver. That's a fool's choice. It's a protection racket, only instead of breaking our legs they threaten to bankrupt us with astronomical bills.
The solution is to control costs. We can start by dismantling the AMA's medieval "doctors guild" and reining in the lawyers. Insurance should not be necessary.
Funny, everyone complains about the disparity between the rich and the rest of us, but they fail to see that the whole point of insurance is so that the privileged can extort ridiculous amounts of money from everyone else, for services we cannot refuse. If there were no insurance, they could bill us but they wouldn't get paid. So who benefits from insurance? After all, we are still guaranteed basic ER treatment even if we can't pay. No, insurance benefits the rich, by guaranteeing their paychecks at the expense of the poor. And since the poor can't afford it, they put us on a lifetime payment plan called an insurance policy, selling us their service whether we actually use it or not.
We are told we are free. We are told that our money and our property is our own. We are told that our government answers to us. We are told we are not socialist. And most of us believe these things, though none of them are true the way we think they are, they are only illusions. The system keeps us indentured economically. It is designed to, because those who profit from it also control it. Over many decades we were lured in voluntarily, we have been giving up our rights and our freedom and our voice in exchange for toys and promises and pleasures. And that was our own fault for being selfish and greedy; though we were also tricked. But now it is becoming more and more entrenched in law, and where once we had to give these things voluntarily, now they are increasingly being taken.
