But then again, the opposite of this is they're also not equipped to make a judgement for non-critical operations or and they also are provided with absolutely no information as to the costs they're about to undertake for procedures that otherwise would be in their right frame of mind, and they have poor ability to understand how their insurance will work each time they undergo a procedure, whether it's a routine check or a critical procedure. Already prior to the affordable care act people were performing their own medical procedures since they could not get medical coverage due to pre-existing conditions, making equally bad decisions because they had no means to determine how costly a procedure would be and they still lacked the ability to know whether or not a procedure was required.

The information asymmetry is bad for many reasons, as I do appreciate what you're saying that we really don't want people self-diagnosing; but at the same time, should we really have people going into debt just to get a minor biopsy done? My last biopsy cost $6300 when it was all said and done and insurance refused to pay any of it on the basis that it was "unnecessary", never-ending that three separate doctors were extremely concerned as they had no idea what a lesion on my leg was and they were fearful it was cancerous. I'm not really sure how that can be deemed unnecessary; even from a straight cost perspective, $6300 out of their pocket now means saving potentially hundreds of thousands on costs later.

I live abroad and my work colleagues are continually flabbergasted when I explain how health care and insurance works in the US - they cannot fathom the idea of paying for a service that can just decide not to hold up their end of the bargain for whatever reason, or that the answer to the simple question "Let's say I break my leg - how much can I expect to pay to get it fixed?" is "I really can't say, it depends on a lot of things." Here, they're used to pretty dead set figures; an X-Ray is this much, a cast is this much, each follow up visit is $X, and this is all provided ahead of time so that they know the total cost up front.

So yeah, I do get what you're saying - we don't want people just going to WebMD and thinking they have SuperCancer. But the alternative is people terrified of the potential costs and having absolutely no idea what they're getting billed for or why, and an Insurance system that just dictates prices to them.