A closer look
High-deductible health insurance plans in the United States operate on the profoundly cruel economic premise that if you force sick people to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket before their coverage actually kicks in, they will simply choose not to go to the doctor. Insurance executives genuinely call this having skin in the game, framing medical care as a typical consumer choice rather than a biological necessity, as if shopping for a life-saving appendectomy is identical to comparing prices for a new flat-screen television. In reality, it just forces massive swaths of the working poor to silently endure chronic pain, skip essential medications, and desperately ignore suspicious lumps until they require a massively expensive emergency room intervention. The entire American medical economy is a beautifully optimized machine designed to extract maximum corporate premiums while simultaneously providing the absolute minimum health care
