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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   2171 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for February 12, 2025

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

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Is it worth it to buy health insurance in the USA if you make a decent middle class income and have decent savings but don't have insurance through your employer?

It's so expensive and I've seen contrarian takes to the effect that you can get a better deal on basically everything by not being insured and in the event of something truly catastrophic you're probably going to be declaring bankruptcy either way.

But that's just Internet anons so I wanna hear from some other Internet anons to get a more balanced opinion.

I don't know how the US market is, but is there some sort of catastrophic product (High deductible and specific coverage) you can purchase?

Unfortunately this is how insurance used to work. Now for a plan to be legal and widely available, it has to cover a huge swath of services, including preventative and elective stuff.

Some things I know:

  • You can find a GP and dentist who will let you pay a flat rate per visit or year to cover preventative healthcare.
  • You can use sites like mdsave.com to get massive discounts on things like MRIs etc. - basically by paying upfront you can get an MRI for $600 that would be a $2,500 walk-in.
  • Catastrophic health plans are only available if you're under 30 or poor. Even then they're required to cover preventative junk.

My opinion is that you're better off being uncovered and negotiating that ER visit if you get in a car wreck, but if the hospital comes after ya and you have a fat savings account maybe they're going to take it all anyway.

Very frustrating that a DIY approach is so barely viable.

I don't think that they can go after your savings account. Medical debt doesn't even affect your credit score.

If the hospital plays hardball you can wait until it goes to collections and then settle for pennies on the dollar.

Disclaimer: I've never tried this but report back if you do.

Yeah this is the sort of stuff the anons were talking about but I was trying to verify

Note that I can't see why you'd need to enter bankruptcy to deal with medical debt. I don't think bankruptcy even discharges medical debt.

Bankruptcy discharges medical debt. When I was doing bankruptcies it was a pretty common reason for filing.

You're right, I misremembered.

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