For the most part Americans get their health insurance from their job (or spouse's job). Typically you'll get a few different options for plans to choose from. How expensive those plans are, and what they cover will depend on what insurance company your employer has selected.

You can select your own health insurance, and some people do for various reasons (like being self employed) but that tends to be SIGNIFICANTLY more expensive.

Additionally, even when you have insurance, there's always another fee or copay that you have to pay. If you have a somewhat complicated medication condition doctor visits, tests, procedures and medication can all add up to a lot, even with good insurance.

There's dozens of long videos detailing how it all works, because the whole system is pretty byzantine.

[–] a_seattle_ian@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I have a friend with cancer that just lost his insurance since he's not old enough for Medicare and makes too much money from his retirement benefits (it's barely enough to pays his mortgage and eat here in Seattle). He's going try to wait 6 months until he can get Medicare but I don't think he will make it and he's only worried about losing his house. I think it will cost around 60K to get back on his meds and keep going to his weekly medical appointment (probably way more) for the next 6 months. He was so sick before he started going to the doctor and seemed to be responding really well to treatment. Was going to try do a Gofundme.com me page for him. It's so derepressing. damn just thought about if he's going to even afford his pain meds...I think he has that covered but yeah it really sucks. Medicare will even take your home if you spend past a certain life time maximum while your dying. Most people don't really know just how bad it is until you have to deal with it and it's purposely super confusing and the the Insurance company's make insane amounts of money and so they spend a lot of money to keep it this way. Personally, I'm looking at trying to move to an other country that has even a basic medical system that is affordable just so I'm not so discouraged from even going to the doctor because it's so expense even with insurance.