Pharmaceutical companies are terrible not because they produce life-saving drugs, but because the government idiotically gives them monopoly/oligopoly control of the market.

Funny you mention the private sector making products. Antibiotics are becoming ineffective, cancer treatments still aren't curing cancer, but pharma companies are making more boner pills than ever. Does the government force big pharma to market drugs for boners or medications where the side effects are worse than the maladies being treated?

The problem is that insurance isn't meant work for things that have really high probabilities of occurring -- say, primary care. It gets even worse if the government is mandating that you get insurance. That simply makes no sense on a probabilistic level.

I agree that insurance isn't really the best way to pay for primary care, but on the other hand having insurance pay for care now means that more serious issues don't require hospitalization later, like diabetes. Hell, requiring contraceptives to be free means that an insurance company doesn't have to pay for hospital bills, and the taxpayer isn't on the hook for paying for an unplanned child.

I do not see the problem with government mandating insurance coverage though. If something a person refuses to buy can end up costing other people more money in the long run, I'm really not sure how it's a bad thing to mandate insurance. On the one hand, not carrying insurance means someone is gambling they won't get injured, and many times they are right, but when they do get seriously injured their bills become too great that they end off going into bankruptcy and becoming a loss for the health system which makes everything else more expensive. Costs are passed onto consumers, right?

Mandating drivers carry insurance means that when someone causes damage they can't just say "oops" and run off in most cases. Or would you rather have to figure out how to sue someone who doesn't have any money when they crash into you drunk?