Related to 1 and 2, people on high deductible health plans are paying everything out of pocket until they hit their yearly cap (then insurance kicks in). It's not even whether you have insurance or the insurance company wanting to reward you, it's trying to save your own money like any other purchase.
High deductible health plans are becoming more and more common, from what I gather.
Mine's $5500. The monthly premiums are ~$300. It's an obscenity for someone who's healthy, runs, bikes, or swims pretty much every day. But it gets worse.
Recently I went to a doctor for a minor problem, but did not get pre-authorization. I knew exactly what it was going to cost for the visit, and knew it would not be covered by insurance. What I did not know is, due to lack of pre-authorization, it also would not be counted against my deductible! Dicks.
I think major medical (true insurance for unpredictable things like congenital disease or accidents) should be something everyone gets, and it's paid for with taxes. Done. And then for poor lifestyle choices like smoking and having a crappy diet, you should either die (seriously) or you should pay the system out of your own pocket to take care of you (start a gofundme, see if anyone cares about your problems).
There is no possible way to fix healthcare in the U.S. with the multilayered middle man, for-profit approach we have, where everyone touches it wants their cut.
What about them? They'll live longer automatically, that's one incentive.
Every state should probably require every food related corporation to be a benefit corporation, with clear phrasing that an equal motive to profit for that business is incentivizing customers to eat healthy. If the incentive is just profit, you get crazy things like government subsidized sugar farmers and boner pill pharma.
'High deductible' is so broad it's almost meaningless. At $1,300 single $2,600 family (2017) in the US many people hit every year making price shopping almost pointless.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-deductible_health_plan now at the high end of that a $13,100 family plan does provide more incentive again unless there is something significant wrong when again the incentive to price shop suddenly goes away. Worse, medical spending tends to mostly be by a few very sick people vs. the healthy making high deducible plans have limited real impact.
Mine's $3000/6000, I've luckily been in good enough health to not hit it. It's been the right choice for me; the amount I've saved into my HSA vs employee contribution to our more expensive health insurance option will more than cover hitting the max for a year.
I was looking into sleep studies recently, a quick google suggests a cost range of $600 to $5000. I'd definitely shop that around, and if a place won't give me a price then I wouldn't consider doing it.
But like you said, I'm pretty small potatoes compared to sick people.
