My employer offers a few options for health insurance. At the time I was a young and healthy 29 year old (or so I thought) so I was enrolled in the low cost high deductible option. It costs less than $200/month between both the employer and employee portion of the contribution for that plan today -- at the time (in 2009), it was less than $150/month, but our costs went up significantly with the advent of Obamacare. Total medical bill came to about $350k, down to $250k with insurance co's negotiate rates, of which I was responsible for approximately $5k. I was sitting on a pile of cashed earmarked for a mortgage downpayment at the time ... so I didn't have to go into debt over it, but even if I had, for most people $5k isn't a bankruptcy event type debt.

For a significant number of Americans, a $5k bill might as well be a $200k bill. A lot of people are living month-to-month on far less, and I wouldn't be surprised if most people couldn't actually afford that, or couldn't even manage to acquire $5k in debt, let alone pay it off.

The reality is that you're in a privileged position, and it may not seem like it to you but there are a huge number of people out there for whom your situation would be effectively a bankruptcy trigger. And that's even assuming that their company lets them off work long enough to get treatment and recovery, which, in at-will states, doesn't seem like a thing that's likely to happen for a lot of the working-class.

I'm from Europe and I know of a lot of people who wouldn't be able to front a $5K bill. With the US system I would still think there are many who would fall below that line as well. Free healthcare as exists in some european countries actually helps those people.