The concept of individualistic goes right down the drain when a highly individiualistic person needs expensive health care, due to injury, illness, but mostly old age. He may have been the marlboro man paying his insurance premiums, but the big hit is being taken by the rest in society, spread among us all.
Here society pools together the resources to pay for the care, whether medicare, medicaid, private insurance, or hitting the uninsured with the big bill.
The fact is when we take off our politically tinted glasses and look at the what reality is, is that the society, the US for example, is the risk pool. Each of us in most emergencies will receive medical care. When you are young and healthy, you feel why should you pay for the old and sick, but reality again strikes, chances are you will get old and sick.
I for one believe that we all need to kick in our bucks early into the system, whether private or national, when we first start working, since we all are at risk, and any insurance fool knows, the more in the risk pool, the cheaper per capita it is.
As for being paid for services, I agree, as a doc, you should be fairly paid, and the system can sustain that.
jug