meierlde
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
I recall an interview on NPR with the director of a hospital in Miami (Baptist, I think) and he affirmed they applied income tests before lowering rates. Need had to be proven, and the cutoff was pretty low - 2X the poverty rate or somewhere in that range.
Of course if you have no assets or at least no unprotected ones after a big medical bill there is always bankruptcy which does extinguish medical bills. That is the big club you have over the medical providers to reduce the bill, in that something is better than nothing.