Exactly. In the spring I had heat stroke while at Coachella (an art and music festival), and because I have Addison's Disease (caused by chickenpox-induced sepsis when I was an infant) the risks were even higher. It can kill the healthy and the young; one of my brother's close friends, an athletic and abundantly healthy 23-year-old, died last August from heat stroke after running a half marathon. Of course the hospital immediately treated me, without demanding any upfront payment or proof of insurance. Of course they later billed my parents and insurance. I'm considered to be a pediatric patient still, and pediatric care is actually more expensive oftentimes. So it was around $10,000 for the first night, and then thousands more for the second night in telemetry care. Plus the ambulance, plus a heap of other expenses. Our insurance paid the bulk of it, but the emergency room doctor was out of network, as was a specialist, so our bill was still dizzyingly high.
When I was seven my family moved to London so I could be treated at GOSH where one of the world's leading endocrinologists in treating adrenal diseases practices. Addison's is a rare disease, and pediatric cases even rarer, so there is no marketplace incentive to research and develop treatments. The British healthcare system had provided funding for the endocrinologist at GOSH. In the year and a half we were there our medical costs were less than a single night in the United States.
I agree with you that people shouldn't count on churches to defray medical costs. Perhaps for extraordinary circumstances they'd be willing to provide assistance, but the vast majority are not financially capable of giving substantial aid to all in need of it. When they can provide financial assistance, it's generally in extraordinary circumstances where the person has a serious illness and is in dire need of medical care, rather than for preventative care that can still be costly, but is vital.
To add - in late January one of my family's very close friends died extremely unexpectedly from a heart attack. She'd never been diagnosed with a health problem besides headaches, never been overweight or drank, never used drugs, and there is no history of heart disease in her immediate family. She'd fainted last fall, and had some tests then, at her insistence, but not a more comprehensive heart test that would have shown a massive blockage. The reason that test wasn't ordered was because of the expense of it. She was wealthy and could have afforded it, but in general, most people her age would balk at receiving a bill for a test when there wasn't a substantial indication that it was needed. I have family in Denmark who got the same test, without cost to them.
Tomorrow would have been her 44th birthday.
