It hasn't been for me, but only because I (and other, likeminded people) have chosen to bank on the fact that we're relatively healthy so far--knock on wood--an

It hasn't been for me, but only because I (and other, likeminded people) have chosen to bank on the fact that we're relatively healthy so far--knock on wood--and chosen to forego it. I don't mean that I'm literally uninsured. I mean that I have one of those "catastrophic" high-deductible policies that so many young people are stuck with, so for any kind of routine procedures or office visits or anything barring an improbable tragedy, it's as good as not having a policy at all. The charges are simply passed through to me unadjusted. And when you have a policy like that and run into a large claim (say, a $90,000 hospitalisation with an acute condition), you have a fairly high chance of being denied a claim on the basis of a "pre-existing condition" or some other reason they will find to try to deny your claim. Insurers have entire departments just to deal with disputing large claims. Much of the Obamacare "pre-existing condition" legislation doesn't apply to this scenario, or grandfathers in policies written in prior years. An actually decent policy - some kind of low-deductible, high-choice PPO plan - is just absurdly expensive from an operational expense drag point of view, even for an ostensibly healthy 25 year old.