Talking about health insurance is touchy because when we get sick it can take all our savings to get well, or even not get well.  Through a perhaps long chain of events, lack of health insurance obviously CAN kill people.  If pols decide to ignore the idea that thru a long chain of events lack of health insurance can kill people, that is on them, not the dead people.

And is there any doubt that lacking health care, we die younger?  How can the GOP ever say lack of health care does not lead to death?

Let's try what I hope is an objective source: US National Library of Medicine
National Institutes of Health

"Myths And Misconceptions About U.S. Health Insurance"
Health care reform is hindered by confusion about how health insurance works.
Katherine Baicker and Amitabh Chandra

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2647360/

"Insurance, in its simplest form, works by pooling risks: many pay a premium up front, and then those who face a bad outcome (getting sick, being in a car accident, having their home burn down) get paid out of those collected premiums. The premium for health insurance is the expected cost of treatment for everyone in the pool. The key insight is that not everyone will fall sick at the same time, so it is possible to pay for the care of the sick even though it costs more than their premiums. This is also why it is particularly important for people to get insured when they are healthy—to protect against the risk of needing extra resources to devote to health care if they fall ill.

Uncertainty about when we may fall sick and need more health care is the reason that we purchase insurance—not just because health care is expensive (which it is). Lots of other things are expensive, too, including housing and college tuition, but we don’t have insurance to help us purchase them because they are not uncertain in the way that potentially needing very expensive medical care is. The more uncertainty there is, the more we value insurance."

"Myth 1: The Problem With The Health Insurance System Is That Sick People Without Insurance Can’t Find Affordable Policies
Reality
Insured sick people and uninsured sick people present very different public policy challenges. People who have already purchased insurance and then fall sick pose a particular policy problem: insurance is not just about protecting against unexpected high expenses this year, but is also about protecting against the risk of persistently higher future expenses in the case of chronic illness."

There is more in Myth #1.  Go read it.  But here's a bit more of #1.

"Uninsured Americans who are sick pose a very different set of problems. They need health care, not health insurance. Insurance is about reducing uncertainty in spending. It is impossible to “insure” against an adverse event that has already happened, for there is no longer any uncertainty about this event. (Insurance could still cover the uncertainty of other changes to health, but not this pre-existing condition.) "

"Social insurance versus private insurance" - go read it.

"How to provide care for the sick and uninsured?"

This is where the "analysis" loses me, and seems illogical because if we live long enough, I will guess 99% of us will get sick, and I know 100% of us die from something.

".  .  .  we could force sick people and healthy people to pool their risks, such as through community rating coupled with insurance mandates (to preclude healthy people from opting out of subsidizing sick ones). But such pooling implies a transfer from healthy people to sick people, and consequently is based on normative preferences about redistribution."

So why all the moral turpitude and angst about shifting some money from young, well people, or even older well people, to young and old people who have the bad luck and get sick?  I do not understand why we want more toys rather than healthier people. 

OK, keep your money, healthy people, but do not ask me for help when YOU get sick.  Ayn Rand says I do not have to help anyone. but myself.

And I am not sure about how the numbers work out on this Myth #2, but I bet they are VERY close, where using insurance when we have it because we have it costs a lot, AND not using insurance because we cannot afford it leads to emergency room use, which costs a lot.

"Myth 2: Covering The Uninsured Pays For Itself By Reducing Expensive And Inefficient Emergency Room Care [BY the way, uninsured people who show up at a FULL Emergency Rooms are moved from one ER to the next to find one that is not full.  If they die, it is because they were not uninsnured and had to go to the ER to get their care.]
Reality
This is a common and deceptively appealing argument for expanding insurance coverage: we could spend less and get more, and who could be against that? But as with most prescriptions that promise something for nothing, this misconception finds little empirical support.

Yes, emergency room (ER) care for the uninsured is inefficient and might have been avoided through more diligent preventive care and disease management. Diabetes treatment is a good example; it is much cheaper to manage diabetes well than to wait for a hospitalization that requires a leg amputation. Having health insurance may lower spending on ER visits and other publicly provided care used by the uninsured through better prevention and medical management. But empirical research also demonstrates that insured people use more care (and have better health outcomes) than uninsured people do—so universal insurance is likely to increase, not reduce, overall health spending.3"

I am thinking this Myth #2 turns more on quality of life than cost of care.  If I have insurance, and I spend more because I use it more, I am going to be healthier, and my quality of life will be better.

So is Myth #2 worth keeping on the list?  Is quality of life a valuable thing to Americans?

The Myth #3 makes the point about where we get care.  Quality of care varies whether I have insurance or not, so why is this worth listing?

"Myth 3: Lack Of Insurance Is The Principal Barrier To Getting High-Quality Care [This is really cynical.  It is a simple and obvious fact that rich people get the highest quality health care.  We can argue if lesser health care is high quality all day.]
Reality
Having insurance may increase the quantity of care you get, but it is no guarantee of getting high-quality care. A recent study found that Americans received less than 60 percent of recommended care, including preventive, acute, and chronic care—and including such low-cost interventions as flu vaccines and antibiotics for surgical patients.8 Thus, although gaining insurance would likely improve outcomes for the uninsured, it is by no means the only reform the health system needs."

If you study these "Myths" you can determine they are not myths.