Originally Posted by SirFlysALot
You are kidding right? If you have no health insurance even if you truly can pay for an emergency room visit, you get the bum's rush out. The ER will not bother to find out if you can really pay and will treat you as if you are indigent. Medicaid does little for the working poor or middle class at least in my state. If you are working 40 hours a week it is just too bad. And those pools are not cheap and there are limits to the number of people they can accept each year.
A bankruptcy will cause significantly higher prices for everything in the future from any loans to life, auto and homeowners insurance for that person. And with the new BK laws going into effect you may have to pay it back anyway.
Putting that "$500 to $1000 that many families pay into retirement accounts" is a very bad bet when a simple broken leg for a healthy person can run $10,000 in total. The risks out weigh the gains IMHO. It is certainly bad financial planning.
I agree that our nation's (USA) insurance/health care is a cesspool but EVERYBODY should belong. If you go BK on us all you do is pass the cost of your care on the rest of us.
No I'm not kidding you can easily negotiate that $10,000 bill down to $5,000 and as long as that doesn't happen several times a year you'll have the money in retirement accounts to pull out and pay it or you can work out low payment plans.
Anyone who is facing a choice between health insurance and retirement savings needs to put pencil to it. For some insurance is better but it isn't an automatic no brainer as some have stated.
I have always had health insurance mostly paid for by me individually but if my circumstances were different I would drop it.