$3,000 for the doctors and $17,000 for the hospital
How can three hours of hospital time cost $17,000? That's unbelievable.
But I get your point, if there is any emergency medical situation we may get screwed.
But if I were the person in your example but was insured, I would have paid ~$20,000 for sure for the family insurance policy, and then the deductible I think was $6,000? So I would be out of pocket $20,000 if I had no heart related false alarm (like the person in the example), and out of pocket $26,000 if I had the same false alarm. It would be more economical to be uninsured, even with the unexpected $20,000 false alarm.
When you start annual health care costs with a definite $20,000 payment even if you never go to the hospital in the entire year, it's really hard to make the case for health insurance.
In ten years we have never had a medical emergency that required that anyone use an ambulance, knock on wood.
If I live in the US and I knew someone in our family was going to need $35,000 of health care service, we would probably relocate back to Manila and do the same thing for $5,000. So....it's only the emergency situation which causes the problems.
Anyway, really depressing thing to think about. Almost worse than really getting sick! Well, not really, but depressing nonetheless. |
