It is worth it imo but it could be better. This is my back of napkin mental model but I have convinced myself that most of our troubles are because health insurance morphed from truly emergencies to every day care. Routine care (both primary and specialist) have to hire deep staff to handle insurance claims with the different payers. It’s a constant game.

For myself I always pick the high deductible plan. It’s the next best thing to an emergency only plan in my opinion. I am also lucky that I have an employer that picks this kind of plan as an option. Everyone should be on this type of plan imo. I think have a direct primary care (directs don’t take any insurance) for the family that costs $200 a month for 3 of us. The insurance cost is $100 with a max out of pocket I think around $8000. Now we are lucky in that these dollar figures don’t bother us, not true for everyone but I do think most of us would be better off if we have better forms of true emergency insurance. I want to pool the risk of a catastrophic illness or accident, not my doctors visit for a cough.

I pay my dpc directly for all testing and it’s cheap. A lot cheaper than if it was billed via insurance.