I honestly feel like it’s nuts that we don’t collectively fund healthcare, precisely because I don’t want to live in a world where I may be ruined by an illness and I am willing to pay to make sure others don’t have to live in that world.

However I am specifically a proponent of voluntary collectives for things, as government forced cooperation seems suboptimal and fragile to me.

> I honestly feel like it’s nuts that we don’t collectively fund healthcare, precisely because I don’t want to live in a world where I may be ruined by an illness and I am willing to pay to make sure others don’t have to live in that world.

Isn't this the exact thing insurance solves, in particular catastrophic coverage insurance? Nobody really gets "ruined" by paying out of pocket for one X-ray and two aspirin.

The problem is that the insurance is so expensive some people can't afford it. But the only sense in which single payer would "fix" the high cost/overhead/waste problem is by de facto regulating prices, which can be done even without it but which has a lot of obvious problems -- if the regulator chooses too high a price then it's still wasteful/unaffordable but too low and there will be no providers (or the providers will sacrifice quality to hit the regulated price).

What we need is a real solution to cost disease, which probably has something to do with reducing the regulatory compliance costs so there will be less overhead and more viable competing providers, requiring price transparency from providers, and then having people pay out of pocket for all non-catastrophic care so the patient has the incentive to decline treatment or find a less expensive provider when the treatment is unnecessary or overpriced.

The problem is that the patient doesn't know what the right price is, and what the difference in products will be when going to a competing lower price offer. It's fine to try out a competing smartphone at a lower price point; I would not want to gamble with my health that way.

> The problem is that the patient doesn't know what the right price is, and what the difference in products will be when going to a competing lower price offer.

This is why there are regulations to ensure a minimum standard of care. Above that, the provider is the one who has to convince the patient that their service provides some benefit over the lowest cost provider.

Aren't these two things mutually incompatible? How do you have universal healthcare that doesn't let anyone be bankrupted by their illness, where participation is also voluntary?

And isn't voluntary collective healthcare just another way to describe private insurance companies, especially HMO's?

Well, with universal and mandatory healthcare you wouldn't be bankrupted by your illness since the insurance covers it. The population at large pays for the few that need the expensive treatments.