This is so true. We have reasonable heath insurance, have two good-paying jobs, and a child with a chronic illness. We pay about $10k/year in premiums for family coverage plus so far this year, we have spent another $10k out of pocket and we are juuuust about to hit our out-of-pocket maximum. Talking to insurance to try and get them to pay for services that should clearly be covered takes me 15-20 hours/week - it is quite literally my part-time job on top of my regular job.

We make too much to qualify for charity, discounts, etc., and at the same time, we don’t pay enough to qualify for it to be a deduction on our taxes. I’m grateful we have good incomes and insurance, but it’s so expensive and we make a lot of care decisions for the rest of us based off of what his expenses are.

It’s interesting because we go to a clinic where most kids are on Medicaid, so the doctor usually has zero incentive to bundle tests or try to group them into the same year to take advantage of having hit the OOP max. We have had to do a lot of explaining about this - like let’s get it done NOW before our deductible/OOP resets in case we might not have to hit it next year. That’s frustrating, too.