Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background.

Is it common in the US not to pay medical bills?
What you have here is an interesting argument. Right now, this is totally complicated by the state of "forced insurance" that is currently in such hot debate right now.  As a general rule of thumb though, most Americans pay their medical bills in one way or another. Though It is also accurate to say that most Americans have avoided paying a medical bill at one point or another.  I will give an example that will help clarify. My wife gets a Iron infusion shot one every year or so. We choose not to have insurance. The cost to us is around $275. We know this upfront and have always paid it up front. Except for one year. One year we had insurance. The facility that does the infusions charged us $23,500 to do the infusion that year. The insurance paid $275 to them. We refused to pay the remaining  $23,225.  This is a real example using real numbers.  SO while we are more then able to pay the "normal" amount, and we could, in theory, pay the inflated amount, We out right refuse to.  The medical facility tried to negotiated the amount down to $11,000 but we refused. They then tried to talk us into a credit plan. We refused. Then they negotiated the entire thing down to $500. We refused. Finally, after 2 years of fighting they agreed that the service had been pair for by the insurance. And sent us a $0 bill.  The entire time, that facility was more then willing to keep doing this annual service for $275.At no time were we denied care. We did have a dent in our credit for a while, but honestly it didn't matter to us. Wrap Up It is fair to say that most Americans do pay their medical bills, but it is also fair to say that most Americans do not pay all their medical bills. The situation is complicated, and made more so by recent changes.  Heath insurance is the U.S. is nearly criminal and while some changes have been made in recent years the same overriding truth exists. Sometimes, a medical bill, when going through insurance, is just plain silly, and the only recourse you have as a customer is to not pay it, for a while, till you get it sorted out.