> You're imagining this to be more friendly than it is -- "can't pay for emergency medical care" in the US is a euphemism for "got a bill from the hospital, couldn't pay it, so the hospital sold the debt to a collections agency and wrote the account off as a loss", not a reference to a forgiveness program.

As someone who's family has been in that situation before, not it is not. We had a $35,000 bill forgiven entirely because we couldn't afford it. The process was certainly stressful, distressing, and we shouldn't have a system where it happened in the first place. That doesn't change the fact that the end result was forgiveness.