Hear me out on this, please.
Let’s say that I spend $5k on health insurance in a year, but don’t go to the doctor or have any medical issues in that year. Where does my money go? It disappears. I basically just gave away my money, and received nothing in return. However, if I took that $5k and simply put it into a personal savings account instead of giving it away to a health insurance provider - that money stays right there if and whenever I decide to use it. It even collects interest.
I realize that with a health insurance provider, you’re (supposedly) getting discounted rates on medical services - but if your money is just disappearing into thin air if you don’t happen to need those medical services in a given year, are you really saving money? It just seems like a really big scam to me - what am I missing?
With OPs figure of 5k/year that would be around 8 years of saving in an ETF portfolio. How often do you need an endoscopy? Not sure if 5k is a realistic number though.
-shrug- Neighbor had a multi generational history of digestive tract cancers. She got upper endoscopies and colonoscopies every other year. (Of course, she had them done at free standing surgical centers, so the price was considerably lower than in the hospital.) Don’t know how much she had to pay to have two feet of cancerous intestine removed in the hospital, though.