With increasing frequency, Americans are purchasing health insurance plans that require high out-of-pocket costs. Chief among those costs are deductibles, the amount of money a person or family must spend out-of-pocket on medical care in a year before their health insurance “kicks in.” As this figure illustrates, from the Kaiser Family Foundation, deductibles have been rising much more quickly than overall inflation, than incomes, and than the cost of their health insurance premiums.
Because of these high deductibles, January and February have become months where many people, when faced with illness, are also faced with burdensome healthcare bills.
