It's important that everyone pay into the system for two reasons:
Legally, ERs cannot refuse you. So while you may not like paying for insurance, I guarantee you that you'll come crying to the ER demanding that they provide you for service as soon as you have an emergency. You might think that you have enough cash in the bank to pay for any HC emergency. However, the facts don't support this view. The #1 cause for bankruptcy in this nation are health care costs. Chemo alone costs over $200,000 dollars.
Furthermore, without everyone slapping some skin into the system, particularly, for insurance, the pools to cover sick/old people dry up. You see, the best way to keep premiums down is to encourage far more healthy people to contribute into the system than unhealthy. That's sort of how insurance works. If people could just "opt out" of paying for insurance then those who need health care the most will see skyrocketing premiums and the system will eventually crash.
If we want to maintain healthy insurance rates, then we need to enforce these two solutions:
A) Everyone pay into the system.
B) Government regulation of prices.
What we have with Obamacare is an individual mandate but very little government regulation of the prices. So you the consumer pay higher premiums for states that have refused to expand Medicaid and for greedy hospitals and pharmaceuticals that price gouge patients.
In France, Germany, and Japan, they have non-profit insurance companies that are regulated by the government. The government either sets the price or strongly regulates them. Everyone pays into the system. For profit supplemental insurance is available as well. But everyone must contribute to the baseline insurance.
That's the system I think would work best for America.
You still maintain some semblance of the insurance system but keep prices under control.
France, Germany, and Japan all spend far less of their GDP on healthcare than we do. They spend between 10-13 percent of their GDP on healthcare while we're up around 18 percent.
Sad