Comment by SoftTalker a day ago
I’ve basically opted out. I can’t see that the healthcare system has any incentives to keep me healthy. In fact all the incentives are to keep me medicated indefinitely. No thanks. I have a plan for catastrophic coverage but I stay as far away from hospitals and doctors as I can otherwise.
Hard to say because differnent things have different coverages but I'd ballpark it at $5K worst case. That would hurt, but it would be managable.
"Maximum out of pocket" is a single dollar amount listed somewhere in your health insurance plan. It'd be in the ballpark of $8 or $9k. (Again, double it.)
If you are saying you only have $5k saved then your plan effectively reduces potential bankruptcy-level of healthcare debt down to a manageable level of healthcare debt.
If you have a high-deductible healthcare plan (HDHP) through an employer, look into setting up regular contributions from your paycheck into a health savings account (HSA). You can use an HSA to build a healthcare emergency fund (and later invest those saving like you would in a regular retirement account, which is what it turns into when you hit retirement age).
This is what the current Republican administration recently posted to the website of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services:
"Expanding Access to Health Insurance: Consumers to Gain Access to “Catastrophic” Health Insurance Plans in 2026 Plan Year"
https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/fact-sheets/expanding-access-he...
What's your maximum out-of-pocket for the catastrophic plan?
Btw-- make sure to double the MOOP since catastrophes can easily straddle the end of one 12-month period and the beginning of the next 12-month period.