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Comment by nradov | Hacker News Reader

All medical insurance plans regulated under the Affordable Care Act have an out of pocket maximum per year. This can be as high as $18K.

https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/out-of-pocket-maximum-li...

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If that number is too high, and it really does seem ridiculous, we need to be questioning why care is so expensive rather than what insurance policies are available.

True, there is a reason why many international health insurance plans will cover services anywhere in the world except the United States. The US is quite an outlier on what it charges for healthcare compared to most of the rest of the world. And the odd thing is that the care is not justified by the price, it’s not like it’s significantly different than what you get in most European nations.

Well of course the prices are just fraud. Maybe it’s legal fraud, but it’s fraud nonetheless. I mean you’ll see bills for 20k that insurance would have covered for 1k. It’s just bullshit.

Frankly negotiated prices should just be illegal. They should just provide prices for services. Insurers should have plans on how much they’ll cover you, but they don’t change any pricing. The hidden bullshit smoke and mirrors producing fraudulent pricing that may or may cover you depending on a million different reason is as far from market competition as it gets.

But the US average max oop is a hair over $4k.

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