Haha! Great minds think alike! This is actually what I was wanting to do all along!
But!
In order to do that, I'd have to figure out how to properly adjust alpha values to make the health transparent and fade away.
I've also been thinking about getting rid of a numerical-based health counter and implementing a color-coded one: Green means you're healthy, yellow is beat up, red is close to death. This color will appear on a circle or square on the player ship, which will also happen to be the primary player hitbox.