I don't think it works this way that often. It might just get sent to a debt collector. They might give you a lower fee, but it won't be by that much.
But I can tell you this: there aren’t a lot of ways in which that debt collector can collect. They can’t take your home, they can’t take your car (as if the uninsured person even owns their car outright), and I don’t even think they can garnish wages.
The statue of limitations on debt is as short as 3 years in some states, and it won’t even affect your credit score beyond 7 years.
If that person never answers the phone and never admits to the debt, it basically just goes away on its own from my understanding.
Even if they decide to settle, that debt collector purchased the debt for pennies on the dollar. That person settling is not paying anything close to the full cost. The hospitals know that a bill going to collections is already a lost cause, and is basically written off as charity care.
Many people frame this as a "say this magic phrase to get your bill reduced" and I just don't think it's that simple any more. Some of the consequences from not paying just come back down the road.
The US healthcare system is messed up in a lot of ways.
I’m just saying that many people who are uninsured at the emergency room will end up with a lower total than people who are insured with unsubsidized low quality insurance.
Someone who is insured in the US is not allowed to negotiate.
This person can call the billing department and say “I can’t pay” and watch that bill plummet.
The 50% or so of Americans who get their healthcare from solid employers will exhaust their deductible but otherwise be generally fine. Then there’s another chunk of people on Medicaid and Medicare (government healthcare for elderly or poor) who would be fine in this situation.
The group of people in the United States who are screwed fall into a few categories: hourly workers who aren’t offered insurance or who are offered bad insurance from their employers, or business owners that have to self insure.
The ACA (Obamacare) attempted to help this situation by making health insurance mandatory and essentially going the route of Germany, but the mandate has been handicapped by numerous compromises in the bill itself, court rulings, and political turmoil. Also the high unregulated cost of drugs doesn’t help. It was not able to defeat the for-profit health insurance industry.
It’s wild to me that these political parties that claim to be pro-business don’t support separating healthcare coverage from employment. This is probably because of status-quo lobbying and a desire to keep people wage enslaved until retirement age.