If you don't have children? No coverage unless you're in a very specific category (disabled, covered by medicare, etc)... no matter how poor and destitute you are.
https://www.healthinsurance.org/mississippi-medicaid/
Missouri: no medicaid if you aren't disabled or have children (and you're below 381/mo for a family of 3): https://www.healthinsurance.org/missouri-medicaid/
Same in TN: https://www.healthinsurance.org/tennessee-medicaid/
Same in TX: https://www.healthinsurance.org/texas-medicaid/
Seriously, go through the states that haven't accepted the ACA expansion: https://www.healthinsurance.org/medicaid/
These poor people are not getting Medicaid.
I should add, all of my experience is decades before the ACA Medicaid expansion.
No, they don't. Many states name their Medicaid-participating program with a local name that does not include “Medicaid”—California’s is “Medi-Cal”, Oregon’s is “Oregon Health Plan”—but none of them have a general, broad coverage health insurance program for the poor that is not the state Medicaid plan (except to the extent that their CHIP program is separate from their Medicaid program, but that is usually not the case, and CHIP is, in any case, a similar federal program to Medicaid, but newer.)
> I should add, all of my experience is decades before the ACA Medicaid expansion.
At a minimum, your generalization of your experience across the country and across times and to the whole body of the poor and not those in specific circumstances, and the understanding of the administrative context which enabled your experience, is incorrect, but it's quite possible that the reported experience itself rather than the generalizations based on it (that is, that you had decent, free healthcare while being poor in the US) is correct, especially as a child.
This is simply not true. Maybe it was for you growing up where you lived, but I can assure you it isn't today in any part of the country I am familiar with. Our poor friends most certainly do not receive "free medical care at the same clinics middle class people use."
No, they don't. Poor people in the US have access to emergency care from the same hospital ERs other people use. They do not, as a rule, have access to general healthcare from the same clinics middle class people use; some of them may have Medicaid managed care plans that cover clinics otherwise used by the middle class, and some clinics that also have a middle class clientele may take fee-for-service Medicaid, but neither of those is generally the case. And some of the poor being discussed will not have access to Medicaid, anyway (not all states participate in expansion, and not all the poor are covered, especially in non-expansion states.)
I grew up very poor in the US. We never paid for anything healthcare related, and still have poor relatives receiving excellent free healthcare today.