For all of us, it's a matter of degree. To answer one little question -- LONG before Obama Care -- we had defacto universal care, which continues. For an example close to home - my father - 89 - no savings - social security and medicaid only. He has real healthcare costs, and had colon cancer a while back (caught early, treatable - apparently full recovery) which was a pretty penny. He quickly realized, other than paying $5 here and there for co-pays, he simply could not pay. And yet, the doctors continue to see him, and he continues to receive medications. He has never touched a motorcycle.
Multiply this by, say, 35 million people, and it adds up. Same argument applies to smoking. Much of that care, like my father, is indirectly compensated. So people who don't wear helmets are disproportionately represented in the 'expensive' category for their care, and many of those do not have adequate medical coverage, and they get treated anyway.
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts wrote the opinion for the majority when opponents sued against the mandate of Obama Care, he correctly identified that it was a resource allocation law, just like the IRS code, and Congress was well within their power to compel people with visible income to give more of it to the government, to spread to those who need help with health care. All this was doing is exposing the tax flow to hospitals and doctors. Interesting to note that original elements of Obama Care that would have started to address the unsustainable spiraling cost of medical treatment in this country, were stripped out to gain the support of the hospitals and AMA. And we are truly broken. By some measures, the US is 37th (or worse) in ranking for health of our citizens, while spending about double per capita the next nearest country for which data is available - interesting read:
Well - what we need to talk about health.
Certainly not going to solve anything here. Can be useful to better understand the environment in which we live and ride.
