I'm baffled that no one has suggested that an individual is responsible for himself. Corporate health insurance, for instance, started due to wage & price controls. This shielded consumers from direct price increases. Instead of increasing wages, employers silently absorbed most of the costs, as evinced by the data [0] [1] [2].

Consumers almost certainly have more elastic purchasing preferences for insurance as a group, as they are much more granular. Insurance companies love negotiating with companies, because fewer, larger customers with greater inertia and specially-negotiated deals enable greater price discrimination than a mass-market product compared directly to others. This has further enabled the rise in prices.

I firmly believe that the individual is better-equipped to make his own decisions than any central planner or procurement department. We've messed things up enough with centralization; it's time to shift back to letting consumers make their own choices. Rather than taking even more choice by further centralizing from an oligopoly to a government monopoly, give people a chance to make their own decisions. I picked health insurance as it is a particularly hot topic, but this reasoning applies to many other areas.

[0]: https://fm-static.cnbc.com/awsmedia/chart/2019/8/19/image%20...

[1]: https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2018/10/08/50...

[2]: https://www.insurancejournal.com/app/uploads/2018/10/2018-eh...