You're essentially right. My neighbor poster harryh mentions Medicaid, but there are many situations in which you can be destitute and not qualify, or not qualify for many months, during which time you can suffer from lack of chemo for instance. A schoolmate of mine died from cancer in her 20s because the cancer was discovered late due to lack of insurance/healthcare, and then treatment was delayed almost a year because she didn't qualify for X because she had a job with a certain hourly wage and needed to quit and spend down her meager assets to a certain level, then once poor enough it took 3 months to get processed into the state program for the poor, then she finally got coverage and started getting treatment then died quickly because it was so advanced.

Some homeless people get 'free' chemo, etc., but there are huge problems with the setup because with certain illnesses they're too well to qualify for hospice or housing or staying in the hospital full-time, but discharging to the street results in non-compliance with medication regimes because they don't have safe places or refrigerators to keep drugs, for instance. On the other end, hospice requires a lot of referrals and paperwork; if you can't get into the pipeline by getting all the referrals and evaluations and paperwork done, you don't get hospice, whether for money or for free.