We don't live in a world where you can truly make your own choices about your body which affect only you.

If you choose not to get health care (or you're poor and cannot get health care), then you will be less likely to seek treatment for any health problem unless it gets BAD, in which case you go to the emergency room. So, if you're a poor man... and you have a few irregular heart palpatations, you ignore it... then three months later, when you collapse, you're carted off to the emergency room.

Had said poor man gone to the doctor, he probably would have been put on some medication, which would have theoretically cost his insurance several hundred dollars/month... instead, he went to the emergency room for a tripple bypass, which cost US $500,000.

I'm not making these situations up. My wife works downtown, and we're bleeding-heart liberals... so she has some friends that are homeless people. One of these friends of hers, who goes by the name of "Crispy Jimmy", collapsed from a stroke about 4 months ago. She didn't know about it until 2 weeks later, when he was back on the streets after going to the hospital. He was a little slower, but he smiled as he showed off his stitches, and the bill for his collective treatments (which he kept in his pocket)... It cost ~$1,039,000 to patch up Crispy Jimmy and put him back on the street. He now "owes" that money to the hospital, and is expected to make monthly payments... which I suppose he'll just set aside from his earnings as a dishwasher at the Mexican resteraunt or his great haul from begging...

So having a hand's off approach hasn't lead to us spending less on health care... we spend more. Because people who don't have health care end up costing more - due to lack of preventative treatments - but we still pay for their costs. There has to be a better way... but you and I both know that our society (myself included) would never be heartless enough to just let a person die if they come into the emergency room without insurance... so we have to think of another option.