[Retric]

They might not call it heath insurance, but it still is de facto heath insurance. Also, nominal charges of 40k is small potatoes in the healthcare world, that can literally be a few days of moderate care in some hospitals. However, a lot of medical bankruptcys are around end of life care, where medicare forces people to 'go broke' before picking up the rest of the tab.

PS: I have awesome medical coverage, that limits out of pocket expenses to 2k per year with an unlimited sealing. However, many plans cap lifetime expenditures to 1million in coverage because people really do spend that much and far more.

[lotharbot]

> "it still is de facto heath insurance"

But without "automatic decline" conditions, which were critical to tptacek's point.

> "nominal charges of 40k is small potatoes"

Sure. But the cover story of CHM's latest newsletter [0] is a woman with a $300k bill that was reduced to $20k. Elsewhere in the newsletter is a request for donations to cover about $60k of a bill that has had $200k of reductions. There are, occasionally, bills that break the $1 million mark, though they usually come with reductions in the $500k+ range. Point being, very substantial reductions and charitable donations are common.

Again, I'm not specifically defending the status quo. I'm just saying, there are definitely options that allow some people with pre-existing conditions or catastrophic illness to avoid bankruptcy.

[0] https://www.chministries.org/downloads/newsletters/CHMSeptem...