People have fixated on the idea that somehow the "SOB insurance companies" are responsible for the problems. Keep in mind the actual chronology: "How things used to be" was, in fact, not "before insurance companies got their fingers into the pie" but before the government did.

My parents got "hospitalization" insurance from insurance companies when I was a kid. The rest they paid for. Things generally worked, and medical care was not that expensive.

Try and remember who's attacking the private insurance companies and why. Just as an aside, here's a little fact checking on insurance company profits.

The answer to rising medical costs is bringing market forces back into the system. As long as people believe that someone else will pay for everything they want, there's no incentive to keep prices down. This is not the direction the current proposals are going.