Generally yes. This comes up occasionally with cancer patients; if they have an acute issue the hospital must stabilize them, but the hospital doesn't have to a

Generally yes. This comes up occasionally with cancer patients; if they have an acute issue the hospital must stabilize them, but the hospital doesn't have to actually treat their cancer. If they are very poor, they should in theory be covered by Medicaid, which will then pay for treatment. But this requires them to actually be in a condition (mentally/physically/education-wise) to figure out how to sign up and be approved for it, since coverage isn't automatic. Afaik, even if the hospital is able to determine the person should be eligible, they can't just treat the person and then sign them up on their behalf; the person has to do it themselves, and be approved before seeking treatment. This is one area that I think the U.S. lags behind many other developed countries in: assigning a social worker to help people in bad situations navigate the system. I've noticed that with an uncle of mine who has MS, is on SSI disability, and can't really take care of himself. If he didn't have a family member who was willing to accept power of attorney and file all sorts of paperwork and make phone calls on his behalf, he would have huge problems, because he isn't able to do that himself, and the state has not assigned a social worker to help him out.