> "I'll pay almost anything to ensure that a sudden medical event doesn't bankrupt me."
Exactly, and reflects the mafia-esque choice imposed on the consumer when rates are increased: pay the absurd rate or face absolute ruin if (when) a sudden medical event occurs.
It's mildly terrifying. If you're unlucky enough to break a major bone or get cancer or something like that, you could literally be on the hook for millions of dollars. I lived overseas for a couple of years, and when I got back to the US one of the first things I did was obtain health insurance because of this.
This is one of several reasons I have written off moving back to the US. A unexpected bonus of being an expat is I have no Obamacare requirement. I don't have to buy US insurance (since I couldn't use it anyway) and I don't face an IRS penalty.
In many cases that's true. Medical debt is the cause of most personal bankruptcies in the US. But it's not a good option either, so better to avoid both if you can. If you have substantial savings then you'd stand to lose those to your creditors in bankruptcy. If you have no savings and don't plan on taking out any loans for a long time then it might be a decent option.
The end result of the "Affordable" "Care" Act for myself and many others is that we pay more for lesser insurance. So we do pay "almost anything," then sudden medical events can, if not bankrupt us, still cost a pretty penny thanks to the high deductibles.
How high is your deductible? I think the highest I've seen is $5k, which is nothing to sneeze at, but also not really in the realm of bankrupting most families.
The plan I have currently has a $6k deductible for my family, for in-network care - $10k outside of network. This would not bankrupt us currently, no, but it would have as recently as a few months ago, and almost all other times in my life.
Definitely, they'd much rather collect late or partially than have you try to evade collection or declare bankruptcy.
However, your room for negotiation is much smaller when you're paying a huge insurance deductible than if you're completely uninsured. Hospitals charge outrageous prices for the uninsured, partly so they have room to make a profit when insurance companies negotiate down, partly to make up for the fact that a lot of uninsured people will never pay, and partly because some people will pay it so they might as well try.
If you're insured with a high deductible, the insurance company has already negotiated prices down by an order of magnitude. Any further negotiation with your deductible starts to really hurt their bottom line, and might run into problems with their arrangement with the insurance company too.
I have to imagine that a payment plan could be arranged without too much difficulty, but actually reducing the total amount could be challenging.
