I was very much alive, working, and insured in the 90s.
It wasn’t great. HMOs were being introduced (top down) and a lot of people had no idea how to use them.
The prices were nowhere near as high. The huge jump happened in the 2000s. It was nuts.
Regarding the bit about “health insurance companies could reject preexisting conditions” - most people got insurance through employers whose contracts required pre existing conditions be covered.
There were absolutely some places you could get totally stuck and screwed.
But things didn’t get bad until the 2000s, and it was mostly price that was the issue.
Michael Crichton, MD, and author of Jurassic Park (any many others) wrote a book about the state of the art of medicine in the 1960's called "Five Patients". Each patient was a case study for some particular aspect of modern medicine. Through that lends, Crichton examined the costs of the hospital and noted that they were growing well beyond inflation 50 years ago and assumed that the obvious fix was a single payer system to manage costs.
It wasn’t great. HMOs were being introduced (top down) and a lot of people had no idea how to use them.
The prices were nowhere near as high. The huge jump happened in the 2000s. It was nuts.
Regarding the bit about “health insurance companies could reject preexisting conditions” - most people got insurance through employers whose contracts required pre existing conditions be covered.
There were absolutely some places you could get totally stuck and screwed.
But things didn’t get bad until the 2000s, and it was mostly price that was the issue.