Doctors and nurses are canceling their health insurance. I'm not saying you should. But I am saying you should understand why.

There's a conversation happening around a lot of kitchen tables right now. Someone pulls up their budget, they stare at the health insurance line items and say, is this actually worth it? That is not an irresponsible question. In fact, it might be one of the most financially intelligent questions that you can ask right now. The average annual premium for employer-sponsored family health insurance in 2025 was $26,993. The federal poverty line for a family of three was $26,650. So what you're telling me is that your coverage costs more than what the government defines as poverty-level income. And before you feel relieved that your employer covers most of it, that's compensation that could be hitting your paycheck instead. It's not free, it's just invisible. Here's where it gets wild and I'm citing actual research here. A Johns Hopkins study analyzed pricing for nearly 2,500 US hospitals and found that almost half of the common procedures, the cash price was lower than what insurance paid. A CT scan built to insurance $2,400, the cash price at the same facility was 250. Blood work built to insurance 415, cash price 95. In nearly half of the cases, you would pay less walking in without insurance. Now here's where I'll be honest with you, I'm not going to sugarcoat this. Routine care is increasingly manageable as a cash payer, shoppable services like labs, imaging, those numbers can actually work out. But catastrophic events are a completely different story. I'm talking a cancer diagnosis, a car accident, a premature baby. I had one, they're very expensive and this is what insurance is actually designed for. So going completely uninsured is a gamble, it's not something that I recommend, it's not a strategy, but there's an option that most people don't know about and that's catastrophic health plans. Lower monthly premiums, higher deductible, but a true financial backstop. Once you hit the out-of-pocket max, the plan covers 100% and starting this year, plans now work with HSAs, meaning that you fund the deductible with pretax dollars. So the move some financial savvy families are making is a catastrophic plan plus a funded HSA. You pay cash for routine care and you keep insurance for the scenario that would actually ruin you. I broke all this down in my most recent newsletter, the actual data, the real numbers, the full framework that you can use to think through your own financial situation. If you enjoy this level of content and you want it every single week, you can subscribe to my newsletter for free.