[hateMyIdeas]

Person doesn't have insurance and injured themselves doing a risky activity, and can't afford treatment. If it's really bad, why not use bankruptcy, I can't imagine this person has anything valuable given the history you described.

Or use physical therapy, it's cheap.

[WaylonKenning]

What is insurance for? To cover risk of something bad happening. The bigger the pool paying for it, the less impact to any one person to cover all the risk.

Now imagine that was scaled up to a whole country. That's New Zealand. Check out the Accident Compensation Corporation. All medical costs related to accidents are automatically covered!

But who pays the costs! Everyone, via levies. How much? $2000 on a $150K IT income.

But how do you control costs? Who is entitled? Who is at fault? Surprise! It's a no-fault accident insurance system that covers all accidents.

In exchange for that, we gave up our right to sue in accidents for medical damages. Why pay a lawyer when they're not required?

[pnutjam]

I guarantee the average US worker that makes 150k (not an avg salary) pays more then 2k in SSI taxes that cover Medicaid. They pay all over again for private healthcare, probably in the 6k range if they don't have kids.