this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2026
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The family should get back every penny they've paid to that insurance company.
What the fuck are they paying them for?
Not to have a tax penalty. Also the privilege to be told no. There are people literally dying to have insurance that will also tell them no
It's also designed to keep people dependent on their employers. You land a salaries position at a company that provides one of the few decent healthcare plans in the US, and suddenly you'll put up with a lot of shit to keep that job...
There hasn't been a tax penalty in the US for not having insurance for years now.
Huh. They ask all kinds of questions about it still.. but im really just running off of what my mom told me when i first started filing lol
It seems some states do impose a tax but it was struck down at the federal level.
Until you need surgery and it's 400k. For clarity insurance is a scam. Not going without it in today's climate is taking a massive risk, though
Total scam. Shouldn't exist. I hate it.
American style health insurance is a scam. I pay around 600 euros a month in Germany, for me and two kids, and there's no such thing as "copay". Delivering a baby costed us about 8 euros in parking fees. This is a private company offering insurance, there's no single payer in Germany. Other European and Asian countries do have single payer, with similar costs (the contribution is then a tax instead of insurance payment). It's the American "five yachts per CEO" model that causes problems.
Yes, for most people, in most years. But the cost of health care tends to be very, very unevenly distributed. A person might see medical bills of less than $1000 per year for 20 years and then get a single $1,000,000 year. So at that point, it's an annualized cost of $50,000 per year, even if most years it's about $1,000. Some estimates are that 10-30% of all medical spending in the US is in the last year of life.
Many believe that because of this distribution, health insurance should primarily be a catastrophic care model where most people pay a premium that doesn't cover anything for the first few thousand, then covers a percentage of the cost up to the out of pocket maximum of like $15,000 or so for a family, but does cover everything after that. For a typical household, being able to predict annual healthcare expenses for the entire year is very useful.
And personally, I'm pretty sympathetic to this catastrophic care model as a short term transition to an all payer model that looks like Switzerland's system (private insurance, private providers, mandatory coverage, strict price controls, and subsidies for anyone who can't afford the normal premiums).
If you could predict everything perfectly then that’s fine. What if instead of a normal delivery, you needed a week in the NICU? Then that $20k quickly becomes $100k.
Again, in America, until literally anything happens. I've seen 7 figure bills hit ridiculously quick.