From the post: "If you cannot afford health insurance, you cannot afford to freelance."

I'd say that's true (in the US). Health insurance is just but one cost of working for yourself. Since freelancing, I've found that I've been bumping my deductible up over the years to keep up with the 15% YOY price increases, but it is what it is, "catastrophic" insurance. I'm definitely not covering acupuncture.

One thing I always wished there were was a pool for sole proprietors, which would allow you to negotiate better terms, just as if you were a large company.

It's starting to look like this might be part of ACA with the creation of state run exchanges, or at least I hope that's a possibility, so it will be interesting to see how that turns out.