If you don't have the money to pay, hospitals in the US are only required by law to stabilize you. So, for instance, if you can't afford cancer treatment, you'll likely die of untreated cancer.

This way people don’t die from untreated cancer.

Getting diagnosed early when uninsured is where we fail as a society. Our politicians cover up this failure by giving them Medicaid so we spend $500k treating advanced disease and they still die, rather than universal coverage.

What? Emergency rooms can't refuse people in the US.

Having chest pain? What if it’s just indigestion, you don’t want to go to the ER and have a $5000 bill. Oops, it was a heart attack and you’re dead. This is an actual discussion I had with one of my parents. Luckily, in that case it wasn’t a heart attack, but this is the patient-hostile system we’re working with.

The thing I always say is that when you allow health organizations and insurance companies to be for-profit, profit is going to be prioritized over health.