Yes, and that's a problem

That is not a problem. People can't opt-out of getting sick, and when they opt-out of health insurance they are really dooming themselves - you can say that is their problem, but we end up paying for it as a result, in more ways than one.

And yours promotes the idea that you don't need to maintain your health because everyone else will be forced to pay up the bill when something goes wrong.

This is already the case. Many people don't get the preventative care they need because they can't afford it, but when the problem becomes severe enough you'll find them in the ER or taking an ambulance ride just like everyone else - but they can't pay for it, and we end up paying for them. People on welfare get coverage that is paid by the state. You think that has something to do with the cost of healthcare and health insurance? It for sure does.

If everyone is paying a small tax in a single payer system we can save a lot of money. First, a single payer system means no more needing to pay for health care, period. No premiums, no co-pay, no deductible, no co-insurance. In fact, we can get rid of the VA system and the existing medicare/medicaid systems and save all that money and put it towards a single payer system instead, since it will cover those people anyway.

We already pay, via our tax dollars, more per capita than countries which provide single-payer systems. Do you really think we can't do better?

In a single-payer system you will no longer need to worry about paying for personal injury insurance coverage for your auto insurance, so even your auto insurance rates could go down as a result, thanks to a single-payer system.

The point is, we already pay for other people's injury through private insurance and through the rising cost of healthcare. Our government pays more money than they should be for healthcare. Putting additional layers of bureaucracy on top of the current system will not fix the system and will only result in even more money being spent by our government on the current, and broken, system.

http://www.pbs.org/healthcarecrisis/uninsured.html

We need something new - and the only thing that makes sense is a single payer system.