In my experience, insurance with deductible not met is far different than no insurance. In the former case a $1500 charge for a procedure is reduced to $100 (for example). In the latter case, it is $1500 - period.
For O care policies they usually don’t pay dollar one till the deductible is met.
“What is A Health Insurance Deductible?
Your health insurance deductible is the amount you have to pay out-of-pocket for covered services before your insurance begins to pay. It doesn’t include premiums, or costs that aren’t covered by your plan. Once you meet your deductible your plan will pay it’s share of your coinsurance.”
The hypothetical cheapest policy my wife and I qualified for had an 1800 dollar a month premium, and a 12000 dollar deductible.
PLUS you're paying insurance premiums every month. So you have less money to pay for actual health CARE should you need it. It's much worse than having no insurance at all. Unless you have a catastrophic medical event. Even then, for many people a deductible of say $6,000 might as well be $100,000 or $1 million ... they can't afford it either way.
For many people it would be better to have a low-cost catastrophic plan with a low deductible which covers truly catastrophic events ... and pay for everything else out of pocket.