• Let me post two anecdotes.

    In grad school I was in Canada when I crashed my bike, nearly broke my jaw, broke a tooth in half exposing a root. A cop helped me bandage my face, I got a root canal the same same, X-rays, and pain killers. Didn’t pay a cent.

    In the UK on vacation I got a nasty eye infection and a corneal ulcer as a result. Went to the ER, was seen, treated, and given meds for the next two weeks within three hours.

    I’m an American. If luck had been different, that could have been a lot of debt. In both cases neither country even had a method for me to pay them, they just took care of me.

    Because it’s the right thing to do, not because they thought they could bill me into poverty.