We learned this the hard way. Dh was switching jobs and we knew we would be without health coverage for about 3 months. I was the main concern because of my type 2 diabetes. We talked it over and decided I would get my rx filled for 90 days and I would be very careful. The COBRA would have been about 1200 for the family. Way too much we thought.
1 month after our insurance ended, dh had a kidney stone pass. First time he experienced this pain and of course we thought the worst. Off to the hospital we went. He was only there for about 6-7 hours. That was about 3000.
Then 2 weeks before we got our new coverage, dh had chest pains. His father was 39 when he had his first heart attack, so we wasted no time getting him to the ER. Turns out it was a pulled muscle that runs along the heart but in the end the they took no chances and ordered a lot of tests, a little over 10,000 worth.
We are still dealing with this. It turns out the pulled muscle should have been workmans comp since it happened at work and we were lucky enough to find out before the state deadline and we will hopefully be re-embursed for that incident, but that is not what is important, having insurance is.
I also wanted to mention there were many other charges we incurred, pathology reports, radiology readings etc. It was very overwhelming and stressful to have to deal with.
My spell check dissappeared, so sorry for any typos
