The perverse thing is that those supposedly "discouraged" patients are not discouraged at all, since they won't pay for their healthcare costs themselves anyway

The perverse thing is that those supposedly "discouraged" patients are not discouraged at all, since they won't pay for their healthcare costs themselves anyway. Virtually everywhere in the US has programs for free healtcare for those at some varying multiple of the poverty line. The people that are fucked over are the working and lower-middle class people who make too much money for the free programs, and so have to purchase exorbitant, yet often very terrible, insurance plans, which typically have high deductibles, so that they pay thousands of dollars a year for their terrible coverage, plus $3k-$5k more if they are unlucky enough to actual need to use the insurance they're paying through the nose for.