Another thing that's common in America is that after you drive yourself to the emergency room, you sit in the parking lot for a while to see if you can get through the emergency situation on your own before going in, because you know you're going to sit for hours and hours waiting anyway.
Why risk being charged tens of thousands of dollars and losing your housing when you can wait in your car to see if you're gonna die. And if it's that bad, you can crawl toward the emergency room. And then maybe they'll come help you. Otherwise, you can just sit it out like you would be sitting in the waiting room and then just leave if you get through it yourself.