Life, not for sale, but for purchase

One thing that makes people uncomfortable about universal health insurance is so called death panel, where health care has to be rationed among people.
It is sad, but it is not outrageous.
Some people argued that you cannot put a price on life.
Well, not for sale, but for purchase.
What do I mean? There is a maximum price one is willing to pay for his life! This is quite obvious, since people are putting a price on their life all the time. When opting out of insurance, when not seeing the doctor when not feeling well, or when choosing to take indirect flight to save money. At least, they are putting a price on a partial life---in a probablistic sense.

So how much are you selling your life? You may ask?

There isn't a price! Hence my title, life, not for sale but for purchase.

This seems most bizzare and irrational. Not really, when it is for sale, I possess my life, and at this point I value it infinitely. When it is for purchase, I do not possess my life, and there is only finite amount I am willing to pay for it. The fundamental effect is income effect, as economists call it.

If you really insist, then let me explain it in a trivial example. Suppose life gives you certain utility $U_0$, and money gives you some utility $U(c)$ where c is money. Of course it is concave. Suppose you total utility is the sum of these two. The optimization problem is
\[
U(c)+U_0\; or \; U(c+p)
\]
for selling life, and
\[
U(c-p)+U_0\;or \; U(c)
\]
for buying life.
One can easily show that as long as $U(\cdot)$ is bounded above, given a high initial c, there is no price for life for sale. In that situation, there will always be a price for buying life.

So which concept is more relevant? In the medical context, buying life is more more relevant.