That's what insurance is for.
Here in Oregon, which is a fairly typical state, virtually all indigent patients who die of cancer, under circumstances where records of any sort are kept, do so without the aid of any painkiller of any sort. You must be so incredibly proud of your ability to withhold cheap street drugs from these awful malfactors.
Where does the insurance money come from?
From higher premiums.
You might as well say "That's what Welfare/Medicare/Medicaid/s for."
Insurance is part of the problem with the current health care system. People are insulated from costs and thus make poor choices. We need to move from the health care system to a market based system.
Because everyone has health insurance, right?
Because when a sick person can grow their own it is cheap and plentiful. When the drug companies make their weak pills, it will cost $100 a pill.
"That's what insurance is for."
Cuz, you know, everyone has health insurance. Or at least veterans do, right?
That is an absolutely retarded statement.
Sick older person can grow it and smoke it very cheaply, and take care of himself.
Or, in your scenario, sick older person goes to Dr. (after he waits two weeks/months to get an appointment), tells Doc he's not feeling so hot. Doc gives prescription for some crap a drug rep shoved down his throat, which has been tested by the FDA (which costs taxpayer money), and is probably far less effective than the real thing. Old man goes to massive chain pharmacy, hoping they fill the prescription correctly, pays his co-pay (or possibly the whole inflated cost, if he does not have insurance, which could mean that he could not afford it at all), which of course is only a fraction of what the insurance companies are charging for the drug, which pushes up premiums for everyone else so that the insurance company can cover "rising health care costs", and takes it home. Only to repeat the entire process again over and over.
Hmmmm. Self sufficiency, or dependency on the entire bloated, bureaucratic system that is our medical care?
Not to mention the fact that insurance and drug companies are the biggest problems we have as far as health care goes. Why the heck would any conservative think it is a good idea to get them involved in anything, let alone give them one more racket through which they can rape people? Sheesh.