That's the idealistic "perfect world" scenario. In practice, however, health care becomes a common, social good, and nobody owns it, although everyone expects it to be there and entitlement sets in. It always leads to increased costs and abuses, because people do actually behave (in aggregate) like even simple economic models predict: when the price of something goes down, more of it is demanded. And when abuses are rarely detected and punishments are basically non-existent, people will try anything. So then heavy handed restrictions are brought in to lower costs, which limits access and benefits for those who really need help (ie the "this is why we can't have nice things" effect). Limits, which cannot be subjective (because that's not fair and abusable) and cannot hurt people's feelings. Just look at the uproar in UK which is trying to re-assert some sanity into the system, where some non-lifesaving surgeries are being delayed for obese people until they lose weight to make the surgery safe and cost effective. Politicians get votes by spending money, not cutting programs, they will always pander to these kinds of interests.