[paulddraper]

While I won’t argue insurance wasn’t overall beneficial in your case…

There is no way that $600,000 is the cash price for cancer treatment (especially 20 years ago, but also today).

The average cost of cancer treatment is $150k [1], and lower with cash price + shopping.

[1] https://treatcancer.com/blog/cost-of-cancer/

[greedo]

I stopped cataloging the invoices after it hit $1.6M. Granted that's what the providers would bill my insurance, and we all know those are funny numbers, and while I'm sure that a concentrated effort to negotiate cheaper cash prices might have been productive, there's still the fact that I would have had to have $600k or so readily available. HYSA yields were pretty low for most of this time period, and if I had kept that kind of money in a stock portfolio, taxes would have killed me.

And it's beside the point. 99% of Americans can't afford to build a $600k nest egg just to cover medical expenses. THAT'S WHAT INSURANCE IS FOR!

[greedo]

Also, I wonder if this is skewed by more affordable treatments for things like basal cell carcinoma or prostate cancer that doesn't require surgical intervention. In my case, I had full on chemo, rad treatment, surgery, and more chemo. Wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, but I'm sure as hell glad I had good insurance. Dealing with the medical side was traumatic enough, I don't think I or anyone in my family had the bandwidth to deal with negotiating cash deals with multiple providers.