I was reading Michael Caine autobiography, “The elephant to Hollywood”. At a certain point he’s in living in LA, and his wife becomes suddenly ill. She had a burst appendix, one of these “you have surgery on a couple hours or you die” situations. The thing is once they get to the hospital and she’s properly diagnosed, Caine is asked $5000 beforehand for her operation, and he’s literally told; “No money, no operation”. Eventually he realizes that he belongs to the actors Gild, so the operation is covered, and everything was alright. But I wondered, does (did) the US health system really work like this? Will a perfectly curable person be left to die just because a forward payment can’t be done? For context, this happened in LA probably in the 60s or 70s.
Late reply, didn’t see this post before:
This is actually a common plot point in a lot of Chinese dramas. Like there’s a character that need an emergency life-saving surgery but the hospital requires the next-of-kin to pay a large amount money first, which they cant afford, but then they have a rich relative they haven’t talked to in a while, so they frantically try to find their phone number / address and try to get in contact. It’s kinda so overdone, like it’s the “cliche” of Chinese drama.
Not sure if this is still a thing anymore, but there is no laws in China that requires hospitals to treat you if you can’t pay.
