guerilla,

What you may not realize is that some people can't get insurance at all, and it has little to do with money. Insurers automatically refuse to cover people with certain histories. My wife was once denied coverage from one company because she had once used a prescription medication for acne. Another company denied her because she is only 5 feet tall. Read that again: She was denied coverage because she is only 5 feet tall.

Pay for it yourself, you say? Ok, let's look at that...

The majority of doctors will not see a patient who does not have insurance even if that patient has cash in his pocket! Cash is not good enough (especially for emergency hospital visits). They all want you to be covered.

As you can probably figure out, this makes it very hard to be treated if you don't qualify to obtain insurance. If you want a system where we can all just pay for ourselves, we don't have that either.