Yep. An ER has to make sure you're not actively, immediately dying but after that you're cut loose and they don't have to do a thing. Good luck with that cancer

Yep. An ER has to make sure you're not actively, immediately dying but after that you're cut loose and they don't have to do a thing. Good luck with that cancer or whatever. Plus if they do anything I'm sure they still send debt collectors after you even if they know you don't have money. Knowing hospitals you'd end up with five debts from different companies from one uninsured post-heart-attack stabilization in one room at one ER. This also makes it nearly impossible to actually know you're covered for anything—one of those entities might not "take" your insurance, and now all that money you paid is useless and you're screwed anyway. Navigating US healthcare feels like performing voodoo magic and tea-leaf-reading with some combination of your physical and financial health on the line, trying to balance it so if something goes wrong both are only badly harmed rather than catastrophically harmed. [EDIT] on the plus side if you start off poor there's a decent chance the government does cover your health care, though it makes sure to make maintaining that super stressful—it's just that it's all set up so the health care system eventually gets a huge chunk of everyone's money, if they have any, and often all of the money, sooner or later. May not apply to the super rich but otherwise you're either poor and covered, or not-poor-but-not-rich and hoping you get the right roll on the dice so the healthcare system doesn't find a way to take all your money. And it is in all cases incredibly stressful even when you're not sick.