Damn, this was nice to read. It takes fucking courage to admit when you're wrong about something. And you explained your thought processes quite well too. At the end of the day it's about caring for the system and making sure everyone in the system has comfort, security, health, and their basic needs met. If you argue anecdotally from an individualistic perspective you are bound to put one imagined groups interests (i..e, your own) over everyone else's.
I don't want to dive into politics, but it's worth keeping in mind that politicians are not incarnations of public interest. They are human beings with their own interests-- namely, persuading people to vote for them in the interest of keeping their jobs. This means that they will say, endorse and do things that might be good for them on a political timescale, but not necessarily good for the public, especially since changes in society and economic systems take a longer time to manifest. Basically, a healthier nation means a nation more able to work, which means more goods and services, which means greater wealth creation and therefore a higher standard of living. This shit is complicated, which is why we elect people to make decisions on things we are not experts in. Unfortunately, politicians are often not experts in all the things they have to make decisions on either and we can't reasonably expect them to be as expertise takes a long time to develop. Hopefully, we will be able to someday create a system that allows the public and economic interests to be served over the interests of individuals while maintaining our economic strength.