Very similar story, in the US as well. Went in, had a couple of tests that ruled out anything serious and was on my way in ~1.5 hours including all of the various wait times. Saw one doctor for maybe 1 minute and had a couple of nurses spend about 10 minutes with me total during the various tests.

Insurance was billed ~10k, with coinsurance I had to pay $1,400. This is after the hospital billing in multiple rounds and forgetting to bill insurance on one of them and also forgetting to send the bill to me (which if I hadn't been proactive about following up with would have led to it getting sent over to collections).

I'm assuming I have better health insurance than a decent percentage of the population and I can afford the bill but how the hell can most people? What a terrible, terrible choice for someone to have to make between getting care when they're at their most desperate and avoiding financial ruin

As a Norwegian expat living in Australia for nearly two decades, that just comes across [insert many expletives] insane. Depending on the nature and urgency of the tests, my guess is you'd not be up for anything at all in either of Norway (which is very similar to all of Europe, I guess) or Australia.

I see USA as a country where, if the car crash didn't kill you, the medical bills certainly will.

Which is ridiculous. We're at the point where the insurance is just covering the cost of the overhead that necessitates having insurance in the first place. There's no way the real charge should be $800, let alone co-pay.

> Which is ridiculous. We're at the point where the insurance is just covering the cost of the overhead that necessitates having insurance in the first place. There's no way the real charge should be $800, let alone co-pay.

You're right. Of course the private insurance premiums have a negative expected value. Aside from insurance always having a negative expected cash value by definition, private insurance premiums are literally used to subsidize care of Medicare, Medicaid, and uninsured patients.

This is exactly right.

That $800 is cheap. I have a high deductible plan, and a recent visit will easily wipe out $4,500 of the $6,000 I had saved in my HSA. For a family of 4, I have been trying to save $8,500 (my OOP family maximum) for 3 years, but the HSA max contribution caps me at $6,750. Can't get there.