We can always go back to letting insurers deny health care based on “pre-existing conditions.” I’d rather regulators deciding people shouldn’t be priced out of the healthcare market for having asthma or diabetes.

Or go back before the (unfunded) EMTALA bill where uninsured people were told to just die in the hospital parking lot.

Perhaps the primary goal shouldn't be regulation or de-regulation, but ensuring affordable access?

Whatever mechanism the government uses to “ensure affordable access” would be a regulation. We’ve seen what fully unregulated healthcare looks like and it’s people dying in the streets.

Agree that it would be a regulation. I'm suggesting that this be the goal of regulation, though. Instead, many regulations seem to be focused on improving quality without regard as to how that affects access.

That is the goal on the Dem side though. Universal healthcare isn’t picky on the how but on the outcome. That was a core theme of the failed “Hillary Care” bill in the 90s.

The Republican EMTALA bill solved access. Every ER is required to treat everyone regardless of their ability to pay. The republicans didn’t fund this particular bit of regulation so the costs flow into the outsized bills hospitals charge.

As you talk about the affordability of healthcare, I assume that you're talking about the US system. Consider this: is US healthcare more or less regulated than that of the rest of the developed world?

A more suitable comparison would be whether the US's (or Germany's) healthcare system is more or less regulated compared to 50 years ago. Now also look at the pricing.