Essentially, we have a single payer plan (and a dang good one) for all low income earners, and no income earners. Make past that threshold, and medical gets very expensive, very quickly.
Best move for most folks is to spend less, earn less, pay no taxes, get a EITC and get medical for free. They'll end up miles ahead.
I beg to differ about being 'danged good'. Google "Oregon Health Plan Study" when you get a few free minutes.
Quick story. Oregon got a waver from the feds to change medicare and expand services/coverage. However Oregon didn't get enough money to cover all the expansion. So they held a random lottery to chose those that got covered. This provided an excellent opportunity to compare those covered vs those not as both populations were random.
Results were that medical outcomes were statistically the indistinguishable between the two groups. The only place there was a increase in 'health' was depression. Emergency room visits (supposed to go down in covered populations, actually went up for the covered group.
FWIW...
