We've had high deductible, HSA insurance for years now and pay out of pocket for most medical expenses. What I've found is that a doctor visit is less than $100-$300 depending on what it's for. Med center/urgent care is less than $200 usually, not counting lab tests if you need them to send something out. Lab tests vary but we've gotten bills up to $300 for one test (that was when dd was being tested for MRSA I believe). Most have been under $100 though.

Xrays are cheap. Mammograms aren't too bad either- last year I had both a 3D mammo plus an ultrasound one. Both advance tests with the film and the specialist to look over everything was less than $1,000 without insurance kicking in, using an in-network provider.

With an HSA set-up we put $115 a week out of my husband's paycheck into the account, (it's auto-deducted and deposited). Right now our account is sitting at a balance of around $2,000, (just used it for a root canal for my husband a few weeks ago, which was $500 oop, so that brought it down a bit from where it was).

Here's the kickers-

Prescriptions. We have an rx discount program built into our insurance, using an in-network pharmacy, and two of my kid's Ritalin rxs (generic) are $9 a month. BUT, when my husband switched jobs this fall we had a 1 month insurance gap and I had to pay out-of-pocket without the discount. Those $9 rx's went up to $60 a piece. (side note-the oop costs of rx do count towards our deductible and once we hit our deductible rx is covered at 100%).

My son has an epi-pen for a bee allergy. Our pediatrician got us into a free program, otherwise epi-pens are around $600 each and they expire every year.

Hospital. We've paid for ER visits several times out of pocket-to walk in the door it's $1,000 dollars, before anything is done. That's just for triage admittance and nursing staff/basic usage of supplies. ER doctors/specialists are billed separately. Anesthesiologist needs are billed separately. Anything like setting bones, stitches etc is extra. Anything like CT scans are extra.

And then if you're admitted or require more complex treatment the costs jump substantially. That's why I'm a huge fan of high deductible insurance/HSA plans. The HSA allows you to set money aside for smaller medical costs and your deductible, but you have the high deductible insurance plan in case of emergencies/bigger medical events.

My dd had a head injury 3 years ago, due to a freak accident. In the ER triage she had stitches and a CT scan. She was seen by an intern doctor, who did her initial exam and stitches, his supervisor doctor who calmed him down when he messed up the staples and then they called in a specialist to look at her CT scan/check in on what was happening, (it was a children's hospital and they a have a rule that any time a kid comes in with a head injury they call in a specialist to be on site in case emergency surgery is needed etc. Thankfully my dd's skull fracture was small enough that no surgery was needed!). They also had a child care specialist with us the whole time, who helped keep my daughter distracted/calm.

My daughter was then admitted for one 'night', (we went in at 9pm and didn't get admitted for overnight till around midnight). The following morning the head specialist came in and ran some visual/cognition tests to see the extent of her concussion, a CNA bathed her/cleaned up her head (I think this lady did the most work out of all the people who saw us, it took almost an hour to work the dried blood out of my dd's long hair!). We were released that afternoon and our pediatrician took out the staples ($200) and we saw the head specialist one more time as a follow up, at her office, (less than $200).

The ER/hospital stay and everything that went along with it, not counting follow-up care, was almost $40,000. Our high deductible was $8,000 and at the time of the accident we had around $6,000 left towards it. The hospital has zero interest/no fee payment plans and were very helpful in working us through that. We then paid off the $6,000 in two years, using our HSA mostly for the monthly payments. It didn't really put a hardship on our regular budget, but it was a bit stressful wondering if something else big would come up before we could pay it off!

You can also use your HSA to cover vision, dental, prescriptions and best of all orthodontics (I have 2 kids in braces currently, and a 3rd who's done with treatment, whew!). I love having money sitting in our HSA account, available anytime we need it and then accumulating when we don't

All of my family is healthy/healthy weight. All of our medical costs have come from either accidents or sickness or preventative care. None of these costs would have been eliminated by following certain dietary guidelines. There's soooo much that goes into the medical costs equation and it covers so many different areas. Quite staggering to try and think it all through!