That’s the crazy thing about the US system. For a lot of people things work smoothly like it did for you. Then you have a significant number of other people who get totally screwed with out of network stuff, billing errors and the insurance declining payment for random things. These people now have to have to negotiate often for years, fight collection agencies and often end up owing thousands and tens of thousands of dollars. It’s a big gamble and there is pretty much nothing you can do to protect yourself.

That is generally the failure mode of complex systems. Say if you made flawed software a couple of decades ago, chances were it crashed. Today flawed software will produce many different errors. Not that the former is necessarily better, just that it is something to understand about the modern world were we aren't limited by scarcity. Same thing with e.g. food or education.

> It happens with high deductible plans.

I never said it doesn't happen, which seems to be the strawman most people are responding to. However, there is a huge gap between "it happens" and

> happy if your cost for seeing a doctor is less than 4 digits

which I indicates this is common and typical.

It depends on who you are and what you do. My health insurance costs more than what a typical minimum wage workers gross compensation.