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Notes -
"what happens if I break leg / get run over by bus / get cancer" is not some very unlikely black swan but something that happens to basically anyone.
You think a lot of people get run over by buses? Or for that matter you think a lot of healthy young people get cancer or even break a leg?
I think that having accident severe enough that hospitalization / doctor help is highly useful are relatively common to the point that I would care about it
yes, I think that broken leg is not something unusual - and if I would break leg it would not be some black swan event
It seem even even more frequent than I expected from looking at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/core/lw/2.0/html/tileshop_pmc/tileshop_pmc_inline.html?title=Click%20on%20image%20to%20zoom&p=PMC3&id=5732068_nihms896931f1.jpg
See also
from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5732068/
(note: not verified this study at all)
"You think a lot of people get run over by buses?" in USA alone about 40 000 - 50 000 people die in traffic accidents each year. (not checked injuries statistics as it is more likely to be creatively inflated and would require more effort to process it)
That’s like what 0.01%ish of the population? And of those, how many people die on the spot? It can’t explain the presence of “healthcare is super important”
As for broken bones, 1%ish every three years isn’t that much either. Also probably isn’t that bad of an experience from a medical perspective either.
For start, it is 1% annual incidence, right? Which is 46% over 60 years assuming flat 1% chance per year.
And even 0.3% annual is 16% chance over 60 years.
(and if you are unsure why people care about reverse lottery where they have say 0.1% chance of losing 50 000$ each year - then I am just confused)
(number very roughly estimated, I guess that you could pull real numbers but I expect them in this kind of area - how much USA people in the top 0.1% of medical payments in given year pay typically? how much in say Germany or Poland?)
many more are seriously injured. That is 40-50k dead outright.
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So is "what if I get struck by lightning".
Now obviously it's more reasonable to worry about getting injured in the workplace/a bad car crash/whatever than by a lightning strike, but a lot of this runs afoul of "a huge increase over a trivial base...." and anyways most people don't know that the sticker price on the bill you get for medical treatment is not the final price.
not really, this is really unusual - unlike medical issues requiring hospitalization that happen to nearly everyone (except people who never had serious injury/illness and then died on spot or lived so long that prognosis of medical intervention is pointless)
I am still going to prefer spend some funds on lightning rods and would support building codes requiring them (and would avoid fencing on castle tower during storm or sitting on metal viewpoint platforms on top of mountain when I see flashes of storm on horizon. Or standing next to huge metal cross on mountaintop during thunderstorm.)
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