Actually, throughout history (at least 500 years in the UK, since the end of the guild system) people have paid what was essentially a premium in order to acces

Actually, throughout history (at least 500 years in the UK, since the end of the guild system) people have paid what was essentially a premium in order to access medical care at the point of need - effectively insurance, if not always named as such. Most of these organisations were mutuals, eg, member owned, and would have pre-existing relationships with doctors etc that would control costs. In this way, there were no perverse incentives - people had "insurance", and they wanted that money to cover as many eventualities as possible. The bigger the pot of money, the more resilient the community. So actually, health insurance has a long legacy. The problem, I would suggest, is shareholders who are not the principal beneficiaries of the service. FWIW, in the UK we found that a system of mutuals and municipally owned hospitals was sufficiently imperfect that we created the NHS anyway. Probably best to skip to single-payer in the US, imo.