[glimshe]

To all other people on HN: don't follow this person's advice if you live in the US. They are likely relatively healthy and has never experienced the crushing financial burden of long term, or serious health issues. The financial risk of living with insurance is high enough as it is, but living without insurance is madness if you have any sort of asset that can be taken away by creditors - assuming, obviously, that you can afford insurance (which most people, even if not as many as we'd want, can through work or Obamacare).

FYI, my family had a "bad luck" year with 2 surgeries that added up to over 130K this year alone, but insurance covered it all (after deductible). We are in good health now.

[atmavatar]

Tragically, even having good insurance isn't a perfect guard against crushing medical debt due to the whole in-network vs. out-of-network bullshit involved.

If you have to go through a procedure of any complexity in a hospital, you may discover after the fact one or more of the doctors that were brought in were out-of-network despite the hospital being in-network, and suddenly, you're stuck with a giant bill insurance won't cover.

There's a reason some people have secondary, tertiary, and even quaternary insurance nowadays to cover things each previous providers don't.

We truly need to burn down the current system and reset to something sane.

[floor2]

Hurray I get to spread some good news today. The issue you're describing was fixed by the 2022 "No Surprises Act". See this for details: https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/fact-sheets/no-surprises-unders...

[stvltvs]

Yep, this year would have buried my family in medical debt, or buried one of us, without health insurance. Insurance sucks, but we USians haven't created a better alternative yet.