> But it's often the case that young healthy people will buy (say) only 
> catastrophic health insurance (covering costs >$5000 perhaps),

That makes sense, I've not seen anything like that in Europe, generally 
private medical insurance will cover everything, from 5 minute visits to the 
doctors and packs of pills right up to full blown operations and weeks in 
hospital.  And from my experience all the people that have this kind of 
insurance are generally healthy.

OOC what do pregnant women do?  Surely they must rack up a fair amount of 
cost with all the visits to the doctor and hospital?  Do they pay for this 
themselves?

>> OK, if you get treated anyway without insurance then why do even the 
>> unhealthy people bother paying for insurance?  Who currently pays for the 
>> uninsured people to get treated?
>
> The hospitals. That's why so many hospitals are closing their emergency 
> rooms.

Ah I see, surely having emergency rooms at hospitals is a fairly fundamental 
thing for a developed country to have, shouldn't the government be at least 
partly funding the operation of these to make sure everyone has one within a 
certain time/distance?  Non-urgent operations and other minor stuff are a 
different matter.

> The situations I'm aware of, the chronic condition happened after the 
> person had already been getting insurance from the employer. The victims 
> couldn't change jobs (because then it would become a "pre-existing 
> condition", and the employer's premiums obviously went up some, but that 
> got spread out amongst all the employees, which is the point of insurance.

Oh ok, so if it's being paid by your employer you can't ever change 
jobs...hmmmm.

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