All one entry accounting games that pretend that this or that piece of income or wealth that you don't care for, isn't income or wealth to those to benefit from it (and provide it, for that matter), are economic nonsense.
If I'm paying for the health care of someone who is not my family then it is a total loss to me. Obamacare would be a finacial disaster.
“It is a valuable benefit that people voluntarily pay for”
Sorry, when government pays over half the tab, that ain’t exactly something “voluntarily” paid for. Likewise, countless empirical studies have documented the waste that attends 3rd party payment of medical bills (even when it is private rather than public insurers paying those bills). Thus, IF the entire tab were bankrolled out-of-pocket the way our spending on computers, electronic games, pets and any other expenditure people might regard as frivolous, then health care share’s of GDP would be of no importance to me and certainly none of the government’s business.
The waste in U.S. health care due to overregulation, inefficiencies induced by 3rd party payment etc. can be measured in hundreds of billions of dollars. A truly market-oriented approach could deliver identical quality care at a far lower cost, so until that day arrives, I regard the hundreds of billions in avoidable spending to be a “problem” in need of solution as opposed to a molehill safely ignored.