I understand your pain.
I’ve posted this before, but I think it bears repeating.
What is called “insurance” in the US these days has FOUR components:
1) Prepayment for routine medical care, like checkups and physicals, which of course rises in cost with age.
2) Some real, above the deductible, catastrophic coverage for unlikely but devastating illness—which is the only component that is really insurance
3) A transfer payment scheme for those who can’t afford 1) and 2),
and 4) A Pricing Club mechanism. That’s why if you go get tests or procedures without insurance, the list price is 4 to 10 times what the insurance companies actually pay. Of course, that means that if you have any assets, you get looted, which is what government is supposed to prevent, but instead encourages.
By going commando, you forego the costs of 1) and 3), and hope you don’t need 2) subject to 4).
That is, if you get really sick, you have to hope that the premiums you’ve saved are enough to get you through it at either inflated list prices, or at the prices you’ll negotiate afterwards when you’re not at your best.
What O-care did was shift some of the costs previously paid by taxpayers as a whole to the (incidentally largely white) middle class, and add multiple layers of bureaucracy, unpredictability, and inefficiency in the bargain.
My experience is that most medical providers offer significant discounts for patients who pay directly.