> Health insurance is such a weird thing. It shouldn't exist. You insure yourself against exceptional things. Yet we use insurance for our yearly flu-shot, hard

> Health insurance is such a weird thing. It shouldn't exist. You insure yourself against exceptional things. Yet we use insurance for our yearly flu-shot, hardly exceptional. Yes. The problem here is that (in the US) the "insurance" part is combined with the "price negotiating power of an association with lots of members" part. I think it is well known that the non-insurance "list price" for a procedure is many times higher than the actual price that should be paid. Witness the comment here about the $150k bill for a procedure that was settled for $30k once insurance admitted they had to pay. This is one of the reasons that you really can't be paying for medical expenses without the weight of the insurance company behind you - your bills will not be (what I consider to be) fair at all.