TL;DR Profiteering. There's a book by E. Fuller Torrey about managing schizophrenia. In it, he makes the observation that as of 2006, it is cheaper to buy a 1st class ticket from New York to Spain, stay at a 5 star in Madrid for a week and buy a year's worth of meds there than it is to buy your antipsychotics on the US market.
A friend of mine suffered an injury that required surgery. He had recently spent time in Croatia, and did the math to figure out that it was cheaper to buy a round-trip ticket to Croatia and have the surgery done there as opposed to having it done in the United States.
As someone who's always had health insurance, I have absolutely no idea how receiving healthcare works for someone who isn't insured. Do you mind explaining what you did during those 6 years whenever you got sick or needed treatment? EDIT: Also, did not having insurance have an effect on how you lived your life in terms of taking risks and having fun?
Well, - You don't go to the dentist. - You don't go to the optometrist. - You don't go to the emergency room. - You don't get sick. - You make sure you've got personal injury protection on your motorcycle and automobile insurance. I still bought a longboard. I still rode a motorcycle. But yeah - when the fucking clown shoot put a rusty nail through my arm, I made damn sure production paid for the tetanus shot.
For me, one of the best things about having decent state healthcare is that it introduces true competition (both in terms of price and quality) within the private healthcare market. While you would be paying twice to have private healthcare, as your taxes are already covering state healthcare, I still much prefer this system. However, it does not stop the drugs companies from overcharging both the state and private healthcare providers.