The crux of his prescription is to reserve insurance for the catastrophic, low-probability events like getting cancer or hit by a bus, but high-deductible catastrophic plans seem carefully calibrated to make you go bankrupt anyway. Given any other choices at all, I wouldn't trust my heath to one.

I reviewed plans with a health insurance broker in Washington state in September, who openly mocked some Regence (Blue Shield) coverage with a fifteen hundred dollar annual limit on "complex imaging", which means MRIs, CAT scans, PET scans, mammography, etc. He said, "Do you have any idea how many scans you'd get if you had cancer?", and that $1500 might cover most of the first one. If you missed that detail and got sick, you might as well not have insurance.