What most other countries are doing: Fund healthcare from tax money.
The middle class will anyway pay for the healthcare of those who can't pay for themselves. In other countries they pay in taxes, in the US they pay for it in their own higher medical bills.
This is a matter of an opinion of course. But most Europeans would opine that the American model is the unreasonable alternative.
People who self selected for free medical care didn't have much better health outcome than others who were not selected, except that they didn't go bankrupt.
So, the group that didn't get paid for didn't go to the ER, while the group that did get paid for went to the ER but didn't have better health outcomes than those that didn't. Surely that says something about the private, for profit institutions that run the ER business.
Then why do people in those same countries purchase additional insurance from the private sector?
> In other countries they pay in taxes, in the US they pay for it in their own higher medical bills.
Surely you have heard of Medicaid and Medicare before. Yes?
Same reason some people upgrade their coach-class airline tickets - they can afford a nicer, more personalized level of service.