It's not a matter of "feeling bad for them" or not. It's about providing enough demand in the private sector to create jobs for them and retrain them. The best way to do that is simply to leave the money in the private sector that would have gone to insurance. It will generate a lot less opposition/push back from the wealthy and corporations that are always targeted as "pay fors".

We can best deal with the wealthy by making them irrelevant to the economy, and I'll guarantee that will cost them more than what is needed to "pay for" anything government wants to do. The whole pay for distraction is largely responsible for our current anemic safety net and income inequality.