WTF? Who pays $15k PER YEAR for health insurance? That's nuts. In most countries USD$15k would pay for healthcare for 2 or 3 people for their entire lives.
$15k is a cheap family policy in most of the country. My wife and I pay $24k/year for the cheapest silver option with a low deductible. My wife gets pneumonia and bronchitis almost annually, and every few years gets hospitalized. On top of that, she has 5 medications she takes for her asthma and allergies that without insurance would add up to almost $1000/mo, so sure we could go uninsured and save close to $12k/year, but the second she gets pneumonia and ends up in urgent care or the ER, we've lost all of the savings. And that is just her, I have to get my blood drawn quarterly for a thyroid condition, and each time they bill that to the insurance it's $1600.
So sure $15k is ridiculous to pay for health insurance, but in the US, its the cheap option for a family.
That’s actually fairly “cheap”, if it’s covering more than one person.
For a brief period I lived in Virginia and had no medical coverage through my employer. The legal minimum coverage was $1,400 / month for my family of four... and it was basically worthless; I would have had to have paid out something like $40k in a single year for medical services before I would have broken even.
I'm privy to my company's books to see the employee cost (free for the employee, usually ~$150/month to cover their family as well) as well as the total cost for all of our employees across several states. We have very high quality insurance as standard, and the full coverage plans are more like $20k - $25k/year. It's completely out of control.
So sure $15k is ridiculous to pay for health insurance, but in the US, its the cheap option for a family.