“Healthcare is life or death” is irrelevant. So are murder trials and skydiving.

Stephen, May 2020, “Why the Economic Aspects of Healthcare are not Unique,” NIH, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7328842/

Life or Death?

One of the characteristics of healthcare, which is said to make it unique rather than merely different, is that its provision is a matter of life or death. However, this concern is not unique to healthcare. In terms of the legal system, a lawyer may be protecting a client from life imprisonment or a death sentence. A skydiving instructor literally has the rookie jumper’s life in their hands; they must instruct the trainee to deploy their parachute or deploy it for them, for failure is almost certain to result in fatal consequences. Commercial airline pilots are responsible for the safety of hundreds of passengers at any one time. Like healthcare, a team effort is involved, from the pilot to aircraft mechanics to air traffic controllers. Additionally, the need for medical care in this argument is often overstated. In regard to the need for medical care, a concept Fuchs found to be imprecise and of little analytical value, he observed that the need for medical care exists on a continuum at any particular time, varying from emergency and life-saving surgery to blackhead extraction. Fuchs further stated that, of the billions spent on health, surely a large proportion did not entail matters of life or death. Similarly, Weisbrod observed that “not all medical care is vital to life—indeed, most is not”. Instead, advances in healthcare have allowed for a wider variety of conditions that cause pain and discomfort to be treated.