Technically, hospital emergency rooms are required to treat everyone even if they are uninsured. However, I just saw on TV that medical debt collectors are now going to emergency rooms to try to bully people into paying outstanding debts - by pretending to work for the hospital!

If people are acutely ill or very injured, they can go to an emergency room and doctors must treat them. They will be billed for the entire amount later (probably thousands of dollars). After that, patients can try to contest the charges by proving that they have no ability to pay, after which the hospital will forgive them and eat the costs. In some cases, the bill goes to a collection agency, and patients must pay off large hospital bills for years. This can ruin people financially. It's a miserable system, really.

The fact that hospitals are already required to treat patients, regardless of coverage, is one of the driving rationale behind the current healthcare reforms being put into place. The point is that, if we're going to treat everyone anyway, why not go ahead and mandate coverage in one way or another.

The main problem with US medical system is that it is run like a business. Only people with money can afford quality medical health care.