You’re very unlikely to spend that much. If you have multiple serious medical emergencies in the span of one year, $7000 is nothing for having your life saved and getting treatment. Also, the cap is usually much lower than $7000. Also, remember, they’re still covering ~90% of every individual expense. By the time you’ve spent $7000, the insurance company has put down many times that.

Our medical providers are competing private businesses. There are really good doctors, really bad doctors, and everything in between. Everyone wants to go to the better doctor, but there’s just not enough of them. Price differentiation is important.

There are $0 deductible and $0 copay plans and $0 coinsurance plans. They are also exorbitantly expensive because of the absurd moral hazard they create.

It’s a strange mindset to think that something should just be free. We pay for our cars, our housing, our food. Medicine is not free to provide. The America system is broken in many ways, but not because people have to pay for medical care. The problem is that it’s too expensive because of artificial constraints on the supply of doctors and other medical resources.