This is what almost EVERYONE should do.
It is not the purpose of insurance to cover EVERYTHING, anymore than home owners insurance should buy your light bulbs or paint your house!
Is that $5,000 inpatient? If you have $5,000 on both in and out, you must pay for everything plus $100 a month.
Private Health insurance is the way to go, with some reforms of the industry.
I suspect many Americans, are to cheap to pay their own premiums, and instead rather spend their money on booze, tobacco, and junk foods, then go to the public hospital and expect the rest of us to pay for their bad choices.
If I had a $5000 deductible on my health insurance I might as well not have health insurance. At almost 40 I’ve never come close to spending that much (combined out of pocket and insurance) on my healthl.
Hmm . . that definitely is true for most insurance (life, car, home), but health insurance might (I say "might") just be a different animal, especially if someone wants to craft a policy that will help keep long-term costs down (I'm thinking preventive care here).
This being a (supposedly) free country, there should be nothing stopping someone from offering such a policy.
Being able to catch a potentially serious illness in its early stages drastically reduces the overall, or eventual, costs. That should be the goal of healthcare now - get costs under control without sacrificing quality.