>>2910718
>gp
I mean this in the friendliest way: When dealing with the American healthcare industry, forget all of your experience/knowledge about the NHS (or whatever if you're not a brit). Whenever you visit an American hospital/clinic, they do genuinely want to fix you, but they also want to extract as much money as possible from your insurance company, or if you don't have insurance, you. They are ultimately a business.

Medical debt is legally treated much like any other unsecured debt. Courts have been lenient when it comes to judgements and repayment plans for medical debt, but you can be taken to court for non-payment. No different than if you took out a $10k bank loan and decided to never pay it.
Lawyers are expensive and the court may award a payment plan that's hilariously low (e.g. $40/month for 40 years), so hospitals and health systems will just sell that debt to a collections agency.
For poors, its low risk. For people with something to lose, you don't want your credit fucked up or a fat wage garnishment, both of which can affect your employment prospects.

From the hospitals point of view, they want to limit the amount of money that they lose. If they know that Joe Blow has $15k of unpaid medical bills that will likely never be paid back, why would they extend more services to him than what is legally required?
Yeah you can go to the ER and they'll patch you up, but if you ever want/need non-emergency medical services (e.g. surgery, management of a condition), they'll tell you to fuck off until you pay back all that you owe PLUS a nice deposit.

What everyone always misses in these discussions is that if you're actually poor, the government will provide you health insurance. If you're working class, the gov will pay for a substantial portion of a health insurance plan for you. The people who get fucked are the ones who make closer to a middle-class wage, but their employer doesn't provide a healthcare plan.

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