Anecdote: my brother, who IIRC was unemployed at the time, chose not to purchase even a catastrophic plan, under the theory that he was perfectly healthy so why

Anecdote: my brother, who IIRC was unemployed at the time, chose not to purchase even a catastrophic plan, under the theory that he was perfectly healthy so why should he? Then one day, out of the blue, horribly sick, with intense abdominal pain, almost unable to walk, he had to be taken to the emergency room to have his appendix removed. The bill was something like $17K and he paid all of it out of pocket. He was in his 30s and I think a reasonable catastrophic policy would have cost a couple hundred $ a month and would have, in this case, saved him $12K or thereabouts in hospital bills. This was just for an appendix, something more serious could have wiped him out financially. It's crazy not to have at least a catastrophic health insurance policy at any age.