Oh, I hope you recover soon! > there's nothing preventing you from paying out-of-pocket or acquiring additional private insurance Of course not, but from what

Oh, I hope you recover soon! > there's nothing preventing you from paying out-of-pocket or acquiring additional private insurance Of course not, but from what I whitnessed, it's not really common. One ongoing personal health issue has changed my thinking about it (the commons plan treatment is more or less absent or negligent at best) but I do get strange looks when I tell that I pay out of pocket for that, even from colleagues that I know have similar issues and are much more wealthier than me. At some point they have had enough docs and gave up, living with it. You also cannot add general private health insurance as an addon (only stuff like dentist coverage), but you need to make a switch-once-and-for-all decision to private insurance (there's no going back to the subsidized commons model, it's possible via exceptions, but generally very hard). The earlier in life you do make this decision to switch, the cheaper the health plan gets - at an older age there's chances they will deny you or exclude treatment for known health issues & ask heavy prices. Switching between different private health plans is also difficult, for the same reasons. Although since 2010 or so, insurers must reserve 30% or so of accumulated capital to be transferred in case one switches private insurance funds. But old plans before that "don't vest" or how to say, when switching. The saying goes "it's easier to get divorced than to switch your private helth insurance"