Just to add a different perspective here... Not all insurance is created equal. I am not poor, and I have health insurance. My health insurance, which is tied to my pension, is practically useless. I don't have the words to express my dumbfoundedness (is that even a real word) when I found out, was told in these exact words, that my insurance does not cover preventative care. The last time I had a routine physical exam, my out-of-pocket expenses were in excess of $600. Things like cholesterol tests, PSA tests, the doctor's examination fee: not covered. And something like a colonoscopy, not in your wildest dreams. How the insurance company can imagine that they will be money ahead by spending half a million dollars on someone with advanced colon cancer rather than $1200 to catch it early is beyond my comprehension.

Or maybe it's not. Let's do the math. The risk of someone contracting colon cancer in the US is about 7%. So out of 1,000 people, 70 will develop the disease. If those thousand people followed the common screening guidelines (colonoscopy every 10 years starting at age 30, every five years starting at age 50) and they lived to age 70, that would be seven colonoscopies per survivor, at a total cost of about $8400, times 930 people who don't get the disease plus at least some screenings for the people who do, and you're looking at (in round numbers) about eight million dollars in expense for preventative care. So, if the cost of treating colon cancer is less than $110,000 per person (and it may well be, I have no idea) then it would be cheaper for the insurance company to let people get sick and die.

Go figure.

tanstaafl.