[gambiting]

But if I understand it correctly, for some unfathomable reason American health insurance policies usually have a deductible on them - so even if you are insured, you could still be paying few thousand dollars out of your pocket, no? That's insane.

[gwright]

There are lots of problems with the American health system, but the concept of a deductible for insurance isn't one of them. Insurance without deductible is really a pre-payment plan for "normal" expenses (along with its administrative overhead) wedded to a true insurance plan.

Half (or more of) the battle in these public policy discussions is coming to an agreement on terms.

[vinay427]

Lots of insurance plans in other industries have deductibles in other countries, and the US certainly isn't unique in this respect. For example, deductibles are the norm in health insurance plans in Switzerland, which has a system not all that different from that in the US.

[snovv_crash]

In Switzerland the deductible is annual, not per visit. Once you hit that cap, everything is free (except voluntary cosmetic stuff).

Thus, insurance actually acts like insurance, like car insurance or fire insurance, there to catch you in a bad situation, not to give you discounts on your day-to-day expenses.

[s3nnyy]

It's not like this in the US?

In Switzerland there is a deductible for adults but everything connected to pregnancy and child-birth is deductible-free. Also, kids below 18 yrs old have mandatory insurance that is has no deductible, thus treatments for them are free.

[snovv_crash]

In the US the deductible is different depending on the treatment required. Defeats the purpose of insurance in my opinion.

[s3nnyy]

So if you have a disease/accident that costs $100k to treat, how much is the deductible? If it's like $5k, it's okay.

[snovv_crash]

I've seen people paying 30% of hospital bills with "full coverage" insurance. The insurance doesn't actually insure you, they just give discounts for a monthly subscriber fee. It is really really stupid.

[vinay427]

It's still a deductible and is comparable in coverage to a single deductible if you choose lower deductibles for each type.

[snovv_crash]

Yes, but compared to Switzerland there is no annual cap. If you have 3 medical incidents in the same year you pay the deductible on each. This means the insurance doesn't actually protect you from financial ruin if enough bad stuff happens to you, thus defeating the point of the insurance all together.

[JauntTrooper]

My wife's C-section delivery in the Bay Area cost ~$2,100 out of pocket. We had very good insurance.

[chrisco255]

Bay Area is arguably the most expensive place in the country, so it's not indicative of U.S. as a whole.

[pc86]

It's much easier to have an intelligent and reasonable conversation about something if you avoid the editorializing and hyperbole by calling everything you may disagree with "unfathomable" and "insane."