I think you're missing a key point: our political system is too corrupt to enact a more direct process. We could establish a straight-forward system that enabled individuals to set aside money to pay for foreseeable medical costs, covered more variable costs with heavily regulated insurance, and then use the public treasury as the ultimate safety-release value for the truly tragic, high-cost disasters. But we also couldn't have legalized bribery of our political system whereby those with money rig the system to protect and expand their concentration of wealth.

So ... we can't have nice things in this country.

(Rand Paul is a dishonest loony-bird. And a racist one at that.)