That is how deductibles work, this isn't even a fine-print thing or some "pre-existing condition"-style bullshit.
Understand the basics, for fuck sake.
Having no insurance and saving that $500 a month is good economics until you actually have something happen. My son needed a month in the icu. Covered the deductible and copay maximum in a few hours or maybe minutes. By the time he got out our insurance had covered a few hundred K. My house has never burned down but fire insurance still seems like a reasonable thing to have.
That is just straight up absurd! $1340 for a ambulance transport!? That's like a little bit more than half a months pay (generally speaking), here in Sweden. An ambulance transport for us swedes is around $40, since most of our healthcare is funded via taxes. Most other people think of our "high" tax rates as a great evil in a socialist country (which we're really not if one actually cares to look beyond what foreign media portrays us as), but hey, at least we don't have to go bankrupt every time we need medical care.
I pay $450 per month for a PPO with my wife and I. That's $5400 a year. I had a planned brain surgery in February. I have received 0 bills. Just the anesthesiologist alone was $75,000. I've got the better deal ...
It's not fine print, it's a feature of health insurance. I once got in a minor fender bender and my employer sponsored insurance, which required me to go to the ER in case I had any major injuries that I could claim later, covered 0 percent of it. It would have actually been cheaper for me to pay it out of pocket, but because the police were involved and my car insurance reported it to my health insurance, I had to use them. 1200 bucks and a 9 hour wait in an emergency room to be told that i have a sprained wrist.
gotta read the entire policy, not skim over it, fine print has lots of details that will cost or void any claims. A common one is overseas travel, riding scooters, you're not covered if you're not licensed.
Insurance policies are huge and complicated. And, more to point, it doesn't matter if you understand it, because you're stuck with it. My employer only offer two insurance policies that both equally suck and are equally expensive.
Understand the basics, for fuck sake.
(Medicare is the the Australian version of government healthcare)