<prompt> Human: This might be long and I suck at titles but bear with me. We had an appointment today with an insurance broker at the local clinic where the doctor works that my wife would like to see during her pregnancy. Her sister-in-law recently gave birth and highly recommended this doctor. Anyway, the lady basically just put our information into the state website for healthcare. We live in the state of Washington and for a family of two, we have to make less than 31,000 a year to qualify for free healthcare. Going strictly off of our hourly wage at 40 hours a week, we make about 45,000. If we choose to insure both of us, we get a 145 tax credit which would bring our lowest monthly premiums to about 200 a month. Now, that isnt so bad but there is a 13,000 deductible, which I think is insane. I cant imagine a pregnancy racking up those numbers. Thats 15,000 out of pocket before the insurance company will do anything, and even then, they will only cover 60. Now, if we insure just her, then we do not get a tax credit so the premium would be about 180 a month with a 6,500 deductible. We were thinking about no insurance so we made some phone calls and that same clinic gives discounts for patients paying in cash, but they only give cash discounts to those people below that same poverty line who already qualify for free health insurance. This makes no sense to me at all. We also called the hospital. Best case scenario, we are in the hospital for one day. Costs for delivery and that one day stay for the mom and baby would be right around 8,000, but the hospital instantly gives a 35 discount for not having insurance, and an additional discount for paying in cash, which starts at 10 but could go higher depending on the situation. Now, not having insurance, we would have to pay full price for all the clinic visits, which is a minimum of 106 per visit but would be higher depending on what the appointment is for. There would obviously be higher costs for the blood work and things like that. We are just completely unsure of what to do. Everyone we talk to has different opinions. If there are any complications, obviously insurance would help because if there is, lets say, the need for an emergency c-section, the charges for that and the mandatory 3-4 day stay afterwards would cost us well over 20,000. Anyway, that about covers it I think and Im sorry if this is the wrong place to post this, I was just looking for advice. Thanks in advance to all you wonderful people.Edit: I just want to thank everyone for their responses. We decided to go with health insurance. It just is not worth the risk to go without. There were a lot of things we didnt consider and initially, I didnt realize there even was an out of pocket maximum. Thanks again!  <response>: Costs of birthing are pretty high. What you are seeing is the lowest that it could possibly be.You are a textbook example of someone who should buy insurance. You have a pre-existing condition pregnancy, and the insurers cant turn you away. Youre basically saying well, I know that tomorrow my iPhone is going to break lets say you had a fortune teller with 100 accuracy. However, it might just be a cracked screen. If its a cracked screen, I can probably fix it myself for 70; therefore, Im not going to get the insurance that costs 99.There is a chance you can save money not getting insurance. I would guess the odds are on you losing a lot of money.Lastly, dont just trust what some lady punched into a computer at the doctors office. Check out your options for yourself.Lastly lastly, I just reviewed my work benefits. We have two HDHP options, and two non-HDHP options. The good HDHP option costs a bit more per month, and has an in-network deductible equal to the OOP Max in this case of 2.7k in-network, 5.3k out of network. I work for a pretty big company, so I assume that this is one of the better HDHPs available in the market. If I were you, I would figure out exactly where the numbers you were read come from. Are those the out-of-network out of pocket maximums for bronze HDHP plan? If yes, maybe find an in-network one? There are a lot of complications here, and it seems a bit silly to say i want to go to this hospital without making sure that the target insurance that youre looking at treats that hospital as in network. 