To someone making ten dollars an hour, a 2000 dollar medical expense is devastating.
The problem I have is that I have seen people with this same health insurance end up 50k or more in debt and worse because the provider fights you at every turn. At that point, is it health insurance?
Finally, going for preventative care saves more money than it costs for a provider. Having someone see a high cholesterol number and adjust diet and such is much cheaper than a heart attack a few years down the road. For the provider, it makes sense for them to cover basic health expenditures because it stops much bigger ones down the road.
First of all, I would argue that $2000 is not irreversibly devastating. One could pay it back over a couple of years. Secondly, as another poster said, one should be contributing to an HSA, saving in anticipation of such an expense. Thus in all but the rarest of cases most of the money should be already available in such a situation.
I do agree that fighting insurance companies is a problem. Perhaps the government should require insurance companies to electronically code their policies so that you can get instant pre-approval for medical care on site, with steep fines to insurance companies for reneging on payment for pre-approved procedures.
As a society, we need to do everything we can to reduce the transaction costs of accessing health care. I'll bet that 15-20% or more of health costs are administrative, which is ridiculous.
Finally, many HSA plans realize that preventive care is important and provide "first dollar" coverage for preventive care, meaning the plan pays for it, not you (via your HSA account). See: http://www.ahip.org/content/pressrelease.aspx?docid=21554
Many providers do cover preventative care for this reason.
This is, IIRC, one of the problems in free-health-for-all places like Canada. You can get your bypass, but it may not happen until /after/ the heart attack it was supposed to prevent.
The problem I have is that I have seen people with this same health insurance end up 50k or more in debt and worse because the provider fights you at every turn. At that point, is it health insurance?
Finally, going for preventative care saves more money than it costs for a provider. Having someone see a high cholesterol number and adjust diet and such is much cheaper than a heart attack a few years down the road. For the provider, it makes sense for them to cover basic health expenditures because it stops much bigger ones down the road.