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?

  • Hapankaali@lemmy.world
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    11 days ago

    Your idea is to not have insurance. This makes sense for expenses you can cover from your own savings. It makes less sense for expenses you can’t cover from savings. This is why insurance was created, it is a way to pool catastrophic risks where the majority who won’t need it (as much) cover the costs of the minority that does.

    For health insurance specifically, it doesn’t make economic sense to not cover the entire population, which is why top economies implement such a system in various ways.