[jedberg]

They are, but it's still dumb. It puts extra demand on the medical system in December as people try to squeeze in their elective procedures in a year where they already paid their deductible, and it incentivizes you to not get care early in the year in the hopes that "it just goes away" and then sometimes it gets a lot worse and costs a lot more than if you had just gone in the first place.

Deductibles should be a rolling 12 month bill. If you have something major in December you should be good until next December. This would eliminate all of the issues with deductibles rolling over on Jan 1. It would even bring extra profit to the insurance companies because people might decide to stick with their provider another year since "I already made my deductible until November".

[refurb]

I narrowly avoided that issue when my kid was born late in the year. But yeah, you end up paying almost double for the same thing because of the deductible and out of pocket max resets in the new year.

That said, I was able to take advantage of it by making sure my surgery was scheduled before end of year. Ended up paying something like $200, rather than $1500 if it had happened in January.