It gets even worse than that. Some people are stuck with an HSA.
A HSA is not insurance (it covers nothing), but it looks like insurance (so hospitals still charge you the 'ten times more' price).
A $100 doctor visit, becomes $900 "charged" to your HSA (because you 'have insurance' so they can eat the artificially-inflated cost). But since HSA never covers anything, the insurance always just passes that $900 bill on to you. They stamp "THIS IS NOT A BILL" on the top, but that's a lie, it always requires you to pay money.
You call up the hospital and explain "I don't have insurance, I need the sane price." They say "we can't give you that price, you have insurance." No one in healthcare understands that HSA's aren't insurance, and cover nothing, so no one will let you pay a manageable sum of money.
HSAs are, by legal requirement, only available if you are enrolled in a High-Deductible Health Plan [1], which is insurance and does pay for something, though (as the name suggests) it has a very high annual deductible (for which the HSA is used).
So if you have an HSA, you do, in fact, have insurance.
A HSA is not insurance (it covers nothing), but it looks like insurance (so hospitals still charge you the 'ten times more' price).
A $100 doctor visit, becomes $900 "charged" to your HSA (because you 'have insurance' so they can eat the artificially-inflated cost). But since HSA never covers anything, the insurance always just passes that $900 bill on to you. They stamp "THIS IS NOT A BILL" on the top, but that's a lie, it always requires you to pay money.
You call up the hospital and explain "I don't have insurance, I need the sane price." They say "we can't give you that price, you have insurance." No one in healthcare understands that HSA's aren't insurance, and cover nothing, so no one will let you pay a manageable sum of money.