Healthcare costs in the United States can be exorbitant. A visit to the doctor's office might set you back several hundred dollars, while a typical three-day hospital stay could easily rack up tens of thousands of dollars in expenses, depending on the required care. For most people, these hefty sums are simply unaffordable, especially given the unpredictability of illness or injury.
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Enter health insurance, offering a solution to mitigate such financial burdens. Here's how it generally works: You, the consumer, pay a regular premium to a health insurance company. This payment effectively allows you to spread the risk of healthcare expenses among a large pool of other individuals (enrollees) who are also contributing premiums. 

Since the majority of people remain healthy most of the time, the collected premiums can cover the medical costs of the relatively few enrollees who do fall ill or get injured.

Insurance companies are experts in assessing and managing risk, aiming to gather enough premiums to offset the medical expenses of enrollees. In the United States, there exists a plethora of health insurance plans, each with its own set of rules and arrangements governing healthcare coverage.