Mandatory safety net/insurance policies make sense because what we know from experience is that if you don't have a mandated program, some people will blow it off. And as long as we don't have the political will to let them die on the street alone in poverty, it'll be very expensive to try pick up the pieces of the mess once they hit the safety net. Especially if that's something like hitting the ER needing tens of thousands of treatment to stabilize, before just getting kicked back out to the street. Or wasting people's time in the ER without medical need because the ER has heating and a bed and the cold winter street doesn't.

Not everybody has family to fall back on in retirement, but we still don't want to let them simply die. So the money has to be given somewhere.