I burned my foot without insurance. Out of pocket this twenty minutes in the doctor's office, two pain pills, and a nurse assuring me that it wasn't quite a third-degree burn cost me $2000+.
It's not six MRI's the uninsured need to worry about, it's incidental injuries and illnesses that potentially cost several month's wages.
Under many of ACA policies, you would still end up paying that amount, because they have ridiculously high deductibles. So if you are a relatively healthy person that does not regularly go to the doctors to get that chewed up earlier, you are still going to be left holding the bag for non-catastrophic, but expensive services.
The problem with this reasoning (and by extension, any system where there's a possibility to opt out of healthcare) is that if you have a serious ailment that you can't afford to treat, we have to let you die.
But I believe even in the USA you will get (emergency) treatment and the bills racked up, right?
The problem now is health care plans are so expensive the right thing to do from a green-eyeshades perspective is to pay the fine for not having a plan and go to the ER if you have a problem.
The problem with insurance is that literally everyone will have a serious ailment one day. Very few people die instantly, huge majority of deaths are from cancer and cardiovascular
Cardiovascular problems aren't necessarily expensive. Sometimes people just drop dead. There's the cost of an ambulance ride and some hubbub in the ER, but that wouldn't make a dent in the amount they paid in.
The real problem with insurance is there are people with long-term, expensive medical conditions who will never, in their entire lives, make enough money to pay for their treatment. That just doesn't work under an insurance model.
imho the problem with insurance is that it only serves to take money out of medical care, while inflating the costs. It makes sense to insure against terrible driving or burning your house, but taking insurance against something very likely to happen is simply giving money to insurance industry for nothing. Single payer models appear to be more effective.
