Isn’t private healthcare still an option? Not that it should be the case, but I’d much rather pay a thousand a month (which is cheap) for my family to have prompt access to primary care and virtually nothing (?) for hospital trips, specialist etc.

I’m not sure how it works in places with UHC, and my job pays 100% of my insurance now, but a few years ago I was paying $1200 a month where my employer split the cost and still had to pay $300 for every doctor visit for me and about $50 for my son. Anytime any of us were in the hospital we had to ask at every step how much something would cost because we’ve ended up with a few hospital bills totaling up to crippling debt that we’ll never get out of.

Even with my insurance costing me nothing now I still pay ~$200 for every doctor visit because we never hit out deductible of ~$6000 which keeps getting raised every few months. We definitely could hit that deductable but we’d still end up owing money for every little thing. I avoid going to the doctors because we can’t afford it. We have to save for any tests/procedures at this point, I’ve been putting off an echo and stress test that I’m supposed to get every 6 months for about a year and a half, my heart medication just doubled in price, an ultrasound for my pregnant wife cost us $800 last month and for some reason it didn’t apply towards our deductible.