Hello members of Cathinfo, I need some advice please. My wife and are looking for a private health insurance for our family, but are also considering remaining cash paying patients. We are both in our early 40's and have 3 kids under 5 yrs and rarely visit the doctor. We live in California and I am self employed with modest income. If you were in my situation, would you shop for and insurance or continue paying out of pocket when necessary? If having private insurance is better, are there insurance that are Catholic or does it matter? I would like to know your thoughts, I've notice almost all members are very knowledgeable on the forum. Thank you very much.

Hello members of Cathinfo, I need some advice please. My wife and are looking for a private health insurance for our family, but are also considering remaining cash paying patients. We are both in our early 40's and have 3 kids under 5 yrs and rarely visit the doctor. We live in California and I am self employed with modest income. If you were in my situation, would you shop for and insurance or continue paying out of pocket when necessary? If having private insurance is better, are there insurance that are Catholic or does it matter? I would like to know your thoughts, I've notice almost all members are very knowledgeable on the forum. Thank you very much.

When you're young (and unvaxxed), the odds are decent that you won't have a catastrophic health problem and resultant catastrophe. You can take the risk of being uninsured. That said, even if you break a bone that requires a surgical intervention, you are easily facing a >$50,000 expense.  Through my recent surgeries I had the unwelcome opportunity of dealing with the bills. One particular 40-minute laser procedure, done only under a propofol drip (as inexpensive as it gets), was billed at $84,000. From registration to discharge was a total of about 3 hours! Thank God that our insurance covered all but about $5,000.

As you get older the odds of skating by without some such unwelcome and unplanned surgery get slimmer by the day.

Is there a solution? Not really. Insurance is a jew business and their goal is profit, not your health.

What are your options? Go  "naked" (= roll the dice without any coverage). See if you qualify for coverage through some .gov/.ZOG program (Medicaid, Medicare)? Bite the bullet and pay through the nose (family of 4 ~$2,000/month) for "catastrophic" coverage that will put you at risk for a big ($10,000-$20,000) deductible? In that case. you pay $24,000± annually for the "privilege" of paying "only" $20,000 deductible if you need a hospitalization. Self insure? Do you really want to bank $50,000 dedicated to medical coverage?

Another imperfect alternative, you or your wife get a job that includes a decent health policy.

Like Giovanni, I don’t live in America. Overall, our Australian health system works well. Here we get what services are necessary, without insurance. If you have insurance some treatments are pushed which are quite often unwarranted. 

Sounds like your were similar ages to us when we had our children. 

I paid insurance as a single girl, because my father did before me. When we married we decided against insurance. He is opposed to non-compulsory insurance. Everything went smoothly. We were covered by the Oz system of Medibank. We never earned enough money to pay, lived frugally offgrid etc.

I had a heart attack at 49, and got excellent treatment. My husband does not see a doctor, except to get his driver’s licence renewed.

In our old age, 77 and 82, we never do vax, eat healthy

In 2017, while working in Madagascar, I had a stroke. Treatment was appalling, and eventually air ambulanced to Mauritius. Treatment was good. Eventually I was well enough to fly business class to Australia. My husband had trouble accessing funds, but two of our chilren paid, and we paid them back later.

My daughter who was a nurse in a hospital told us the treatment of public patients is equal to or better than private (insured) patients.

That’s my 2c. for what it’s worth. Not that it will be terribly relevant to your Californian situation. Spend wisely, live healthy and hope for the best.

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Another option is a Christian healthcare sharing network. They are mostly Protestant, and technically not insurance. They can be a bit of a pain to use, as you have to do a lot of the footwork when it comes to negotiating with doctors and hospitals. You are technically self pay but you need all the same paper work the insurance companies need. We used Samaritan for a few years, but stopped when they started increasing the costs during Covid. For your family size it would be about $600 a month, $400 “co-pay” and limit of 250k per “need”. They also do not cover pre existing conditions. Overall it’s a good program, but costs are always going up, and I didn’t want to pay for the health issues of thousands of people that were stupid enough to get the jab. 

Yeah, it's a huge risk to go without insurance, since, as others have pointed out, even a relatively minor procedure costs thousands, or 10s of thousands these days.  You can think you're in great health, but accidents happen and people are surprised every day with unexpected health conditions.

I think you also get some penalties from the IRS if you don't have health insurance.

You can also check here ...
https://www.healthcare.gov/see-plans/#/

I found some plans here for a family of 6 for $25 per month (after tax credits) that have a high deductible ($18,000), but that would at least protect you from catastrophic situations where you're on the hook for hundreds of thousands.  There were some in the $400 per month range with $1500-$1800 deductibles.  I'd at least consider the $25 plan to prevent becoming an indentured servant for the next 50 years in case you incur a huge expense.

Thank you all for sharing your thoughts and advice. I'm so grateful for this website. God bless you.