I was uninsured.

It’s true.  I was once one of the millions of uninsured people in America.  Horrible?  Not at all.  I chose to be uninsured when I was a student.  I think that I had major medical for most of the time because that was really cheap to obtain.  For everyday medical problems, I took my chances.  And I wasn’t alone.  Mark Steyn provides the details:

On the other, there has been an abandonment of health insurance by the rich. If you peel the Census Bureau and DHHS figures, of those alleged “45 million uninsured Americans”, one-fifth aren’t Americans; another fifth aren’t uninsured but are covered by Medicare; another two-fifths are the young and mobile (they don’t have health insurance, but they don’t have life insurance or home insurance, either: they’re 22 and immortal and life’s a party); and the remaining fifth are wealthier than the insured population. Really. According to a 2006 Census Bureau report, 19 per cent of the uninsured have household income of over $75,000. Since the last round of government “reform” in the Nineties, wealthy Americans have been fleeing insurance and opting to bring health care back to a normal market transaction. And, if you look at the “uninsured discount” offered by doctors, one can appreciate that, for everything but chronic disability, it’s not an irrational decision to say I’ll get a better deal for my broken leg or my colonoscopy or my heavy cold if I just write a check for it.

And Michael Ramirez illustrates (check out the link … he has lots of great cartoons!):