We do not have a lack of insurance in this country.

What we DO have is a serious lack of AFFORDABLE HEALTHCARE -- you nailed it dwinblood.

Most don't understand that insurance, the existence of insurance, is actually what has driven this cost into the stratosphere.

Insurance, no matter if it is public or private, is a shared good. And, due to how human nature functions, shared goods always get over-utilized until they collapse. It's called the Tragedy of the Commons. And it has nothing to do with public/private and everything to do with human nature. Human nature does not change when it goes back and forth between public and private. It always functions the same.

The concept of insurance is that we all pool our resources and then pay someone to oversee the distribution of resources to those with "needs." Problem is, that severs the link between consumption and payment. It breaks symmetry because it severs a feedback loop. And the system then goes through unregulated positive feedback until it explodes and collapses.

Consider. You go to the hospital. You don't feel any pain of the bill, so you exercise no cost/benefit analysis on any of the tests/treatments. Doctors are tasked with choosing the "safest" option no matter the cost. In fact -- imagine how publicly pilloried they would become if they were found to be denying care because they didn't think it was worth it for a patient. So they make recommendations without considering cost.

The insurance company really doesn't want to find itself in the crosshairs of being accused of denying care -- that's bad for public image and therefore bad for business. So, they pay whatever it costs -- and then just wrap those expenses around back to the patient as higher premiums.

Initially this was all hidden inside the higher costs of goods/services as most had healthcare through their jobs. The recession/depression of 2007 revealed what the system had been concealing, which was that these costs had steadily ratcheted up to the point that they were not affordable for the system, because no one had been exerting any control over costs for decades.

But by this point, healthcare had become so bloated, so unreasonable, that it was essentially unaffordable without insurance. So the focus became placed on insurance, without considering that the average individual HAS TO pay more in insurance premiums than they ever get back in the form of healthcare services -- otherwise the whole concept doesn't cash flow.

So high insurance costs isn't the problem - it's a symptom of the problem. The problem is high medical costs -- which were allowed to bloat because the existence of insurance blinded us to these costs.