If you are completely poor, you are 'almost' OK. Hospitals don't actually dump people on the street (well a few did).
The problem is that the costs for everyone else are hugely inflated to pay for this.
So if you have a job and go to hospital and your insurance doesn't cover you - for some administrative reason, or you just changed job and the insurance doesn't kick in, or it's an existing condition and your new insurance doesn't cover it. Then you are really screwed - you are looking at the price of a new car for a relatively minor case (broken leg, appendix) or your house for anything major.
The major problem (and the reason the US has a 3rd world life expectancy) is that the system really doesn't fit for any sort of preventative medicine. Vaccinations, healthy lifestyle stuff and especially screening are a fraction of what they would be in Europe.
Ok, a little hyperbola. And some of it is due to ethnic makeup of the population.
But diet, pre/post natal care and screening for eg. cancer are the things that make a HUGE difference to life expectancy - not high-tech scanners and specialist brain surgeons. And these aren't things that are addressed by the US system.
If you are completely poor, you are 'almost' OK. Hospitals don't actually dump people on the street (well a few did). The problem is that the costs for everyone else are hugely inflated to pay for this.
So if you have a job and go to hospital and your insurance doesn't cover you - for some administrative reason, or you just changed job and the insurance doesn't kick in, or it's an existing condition and your new insurance doesn't cover it. Then you are really screwed - you are looking at the price of a new car for a relatively minor case (broken leg, appendix) or your house for anything major.
The major problem (and the reason the US has a 3rd world life expectancy) is that the system really doesn't fit for any sort of preventative medicine. Vaccinations, healthy lifestyle stuff and especially screening are a fraction of what they would be in Europe.