What We Learned from a Year of Americans ‘Risking It’ Without Insurance

Even when I had great insurance and used it with all the correct providers and plans and centers there was still always some issue that would lead to insane bills for every minor visit. I've known two separate people who had good health insurance and skilled well paying jobs and they still got completely wiped out by medical bills and eventually decided to eliminate the six figures of debt by sticking a 12 gauge barrel in their mouth.

It's not really "insurance" if you're getting screwed with massive bills anyway. Call it something else, whatever label you choose the system seems to have stopped working.

I think it's difficult for a lot of people to justify paying a lot for things that don't provide much of a tangible/measurable benefit. Ideally, insurance would cover a person if something catastrophic happens, but otherwise it's difficult for the human mind to believe it's not essentially setting money on fire when they pay for things that don't have an immediate return. This is probably true now more than ever given our culture of immediate gratification.

Someone might feel better about paying for insurance(aka health care) if they believed they were actually being taken care of today by the dollars being spent today. What I mean is that I know of almost nobody who has anything good to say about any aspect of the health care system; everyone seems to have to shop through several doctors to find one who knows what they're talking about, after having spent maybe 5 minutes with doctors a-piece before being sent home with a prescription for what the doctor concludes to be a textbook diagnosis. Many people complain that doctors don't listen to them, and I can attest to this myself having had doctors completely ignore my evidence that I have a specific genetic condition that can be traced to my grandfather who has the identical symptoms(as one example). A friend of mine with a chronic pain issue(I'm talking severe) regularly has to deal with doctors and healthcare staff not doing their jobs whether it's not refilling prescriptions when they said they would, not returning phone calls, failing to communicate with pharmaceutical firms, telephone ping pong caused by nobody knowing who has the authority to do what, nobody can tell you what the price for a treatment will be, etc. It's often chaos. And we're supposed to pay thousands a year for that shit?

People need to have faith in what they're putting their money towards. If someone doesn't have faith that the health care system actually cares for them, they're more likely to not pay for it out of spite and take the risk when they have to. Those with a lot of money and well established careers might have the time and resources to navigate the bullshit, but many people don't.

When we were in the ER I was too panicked to ask any questions regarding pricing for any recommended tests or if it was necessary. Later when we were billed I asked them to send an itemized bill. There was not much I could understand from the bill. We ended up setting up a monthly plan to pay the hospital bill.