If your health gets ruined, you are the only one who suffers, wheras if your car gets ruined it sometimes harms others in the process. And at least in Canada, you don't have to carry the replacement insurance for your own vehicle; that part is optional. That is a good point.

I know that it's being made out as a matter of choice in the US, that people shouldn't be forced to buy health insurance, and I can see where that point of view comes from a little better now. It seems though that there are probably a lot of people who only don't have health insurance because they can't afford it. In such a case, forcing them to buy it definitely seems like the wrong approach. But what I would consider the right approach (giving them a more affordable option) would seem to be strongly opposed by the insurance companies.

I don't even know if it would be possible to link health insurance costs to income levels so that people making less money could get cheaper insurance if they choose to buy it (nothing mandatory), without giving higher income people a cheaper option that would harm the profits of insurance companies. I don't know all the ins and outs. That's just the option that my mind is going to first. I suppose it would require mandating price levels to some extent for the insurance companies, which I'm sure would run into problems too. Because the option of having the government provide alternate, cheap insurance that only lower income people could choose to buy would lead to high monetary losses for said government. Would it lead to high losses for a private insurer as well? More losses certainly, but could their current profit margins absorb those losses without turning black ink into red?

I'm just talking out loud, I don't actually expect answers to any of that. It's obviously a complicated problem. I'm actually enjoying thinking about it without all the partisan, political nonsense that usually gets in the way.