The old system
Pre hmo
Worked, great

It cost me, a mid twenties,single guy, around thirty or so bucks a month for BCBS. Lucky me, I bought it and in just a few months, I had to get my appendix out. Didn't cost me much o nothing.

I guess there's something to be said for being
Responsible and insured.
I'm aware of the problem with preexisting conditions. Can't really expect the insurance companies to write you a full coverage policy
After the wreck.

 Well I can't say the entire unaffordable healthcare issue in the US can fall on the shoulders of one man, let alone any one organization.

 For instance the Joint Commission, a regulatory/compliance agency in healthcare (not mandatory) can delegate new procedures or compliance measures to health centers without responsibility to assess budget.  In one compliance order they can, and have increased cost to organizations by millions of dollars annually (for instance all M-1 classified patients must have 1-1 24/7 staff presence)  .  Its completely up to someone else to figure out how a Joint Commission regulation can be achieved and funded.  This is a terrible way to keep cost down.

 Defensive medicine is a huge issue.  When you go to an ED for treatment for a deep tissue laceration, you shouldn't be able to sue a med-center for millions because they didn't catch your diabetes - that you didn't know you had or have ever shown symptoms for.  You were treated successfully and safely for the complaint you came in for, theres no reason for a full CBC, UA and cultures for a laceration that can be controlled and closed.  If you get free services at a clinic you shouldn't be able to sue in my opinion.

 Healthcare cost management has been failing for decades, and a big part of that is the patients themselves.  As a system it would be hard to meet modern regulatory guidelines and legal protections by going back to an insurance model from the 80's.  I think without legal reform we wont ever see medical costs become manageable by the average citizen.

FREE MARKET
or
Government control

Are there other options?

Bless your heart

Anyone can go back to "how it was" but they have to take the lower quality healthcare as well.
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Really?
Says WHO?
Clever words
Explain why it's true.

There are so many factors:  cost of training physicians, and to a slightly lessor degree NP's, PA's and RN's (do LPN's still exist?).  Perhaps the government should take over this aspect so that incredible debt loads don't continue to drive up the costs.  (They already do  to some extent, subsidizing ed costs for years of military service)

Costs of medicine:  very expensive for some, not at all for other med.
One of the thorniest issues - as research seems to costs lotsa money and often doesn't pan out, or the specific disease has so few victims it isn't profitable to pursue.  The fact that we pay sometime 2-3 times as much as they do in Canada for the same pills suggest some free market exploitation is going on.

Liability and malpractice insurance is a hefty bill.  If we choose, as a society, to forgo the right to sue a botched job then the costs of "medicine" will drop (much like no fault auto insurance) but perhaps only for a time.  And as the medical world has been slow to discipline its own, we would lose one important quality control device.

Staffing: an enormous cost, all the office staff, practice managers, coders and billing staff,  receptionist, nurses, ambo rides at 1K a trip (really??).

Tests - while it was suggested that treating only the ailment that brought you to the doctor, rather than seeking out and controlling the underlying cause is a short time cost reducer but I really believe a long time cost increaser.  You bruise at a baseball game, go see the Doc.  He puts on a plaster, gives you a pain pill.  BUT, if he did the tests and found you had diabeties it would make a world of difference in the long run as you could modify food intakes, exercise and manage it with meds for a much longer and more productive life.  Yet, doing a brain scan $2K for everyone who presents with dizziness blows a budget (especially during flu season yada yada)
and lastly the social responsibility - with almost half our population is so poor it doesn't pay income tax, do you think those people would be able to get to or afford medical care?  In those rose colored olden days a doctor would write off the bill of patients who couldn't pay, but would do only the most basic things (set a broken bone e.g.)  In today's world you are relegating half the population to poor living, early dying and REALLY much less productivity -a key point until the robots take over!