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Ask HN: Should I forgoe health insurance in US?
My wife and I take no medications and are healthy. Our combined premium is now nearing $1000/mo. I am self employed. I would much rather save the $12,000 a year.
The argument I hear for having health insurance is that they pay for unexpected expenses. But that doesn't make sense to me. If some unexpected health event happened and we ended up in the hospital, and then ended up with $100k bill, wouldn't we be able to just pay that down over time like any other debt? Why is it necessary that insurance pays the debt?
The fact that we currently spend 20% of our after-tax income on health insurance is starting to seem absurd, when we don't actually foresee needing anything but emergency hospital treatment for unexpected accidents.