Younger people do have fewer needs to treat chronic illnesses. That doesn't mean that healthcare can never be a significant financial burden regardless.

- I've met people that have had terminal cancer in their very early 30s (didn't leave a giant bill to their state as this happened in the UK)

- I've had a friend that needed an ambulance for his pregnant wife from an airport (>10K USD in out of pocket expenses)

- I've been stabbed in an attempted robbery (again, no expense as this was in Argentina)

- Young people with chronic illnesses exist

I think it's pretty clear from context that I was talking about average medical expenses by age, for which older people do pay much, much more.

Also, $10K is a low figure for medical expenses compared to how much one can spend. End of life care for the elderly can easily run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. My grandfather has been in and out of the hospital a lot this year with a broken hip, complications thereof, and fairly advanced dementia, and his covered medical expenses have been astronomical. He gets full-time care every waking moment, 7 days a week -- so that's several full-time salaries on top of medical expenses. $10K doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of how much it can cost to treat someone.

I believe that the disagreement we're having is born of what I'm possibly failing to do, which is getting the point across that talking about averages when the distribution is not anywhere close to normal is not useful and can be disastrous. If the average cost is maybe a few hundred dollars a month, but you have a low probability of having to pay several thousand dollars in an unlikely event, different people with different thresholds for risk will make different decisions. I'm just trying to make explicit to foreigners some things that are implicit to Americans so that they can make decide for themselves if it is worth it. I've clearly decided it was worth it, given I'm in the US now, but there's plenty I learned only once I was here that I would have appreciated knowing beforehands.

As an aside, the 10K figure was just he ambulance ride. I'm supplying that as a lower bound for the cost on an accident, which people in other countries would not believe.