To paraphrase Jane Austin, it is a truth universally acknowledged, that the demand for healthcare will always exceed the supply. In other words, we cannot currently, and perhaps never will, be able to afford all the healthcare we want.
Most healthcare in developed nations is paid for by an insurance model in one way or another: either via private insurance companies where certain patients, conditions or tests can be excluded from cover, or a publically funded system where exclusions from cover are trickier. These rely on a large proportion of people paying in, who are not taking out, as some people will ‘take out’ significant healthcare resource that is enormously expensive.
Without this base of healthy people, the system collapses. Another substantial problem with the ‘insurance’ model is the lack of price transparency and adage of Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman: “that no one spends someone else’s money with that same care as they do their own”. Thus, third party payer models are vulnerable to wasteful spending.