Doctors and nurses and others, including the janitors, have to be paid.
Equipment has to be purchased and maintained. The hospital building has to be kept up. The place has to pass inspections.
Going to the emergency room for "free" care is actually just making others pay for your care.
If you are going to make others pay for your care, do it with some dignity. Accept government subsidies or charity for your healthcare insurance. But be insured. Pay your way.
To become a doctor in the US, you not only have to have top grades in tough science and math (chemistry, anyone??, biochemistry, anyone???) as a college undergraduate and pass an entrance exam to medical school, but you have to pass interviews.
Then in medical school, you continue to spend long hours in lectures and, possibly, take gross anatomy (dissection of a cadaver) your first year, as well as do practical work in a hospital alongside the doctors.
Then of course there is your residency. The hours a resident can work have been reduced to prevent accidents, but most of the doctors now working spent long, long, long hours without sleep tending patients and learning to practice medicine under experienced doctors in a hospital before they were finally permitted to practice. The length of the residency depends on the specialty of the doctor.
And then there is the life of the doctor after residency. Remember that interview to get into medical school. Well, one of the traits a doctor needs is empathy and that is shown in that interview and in the doctor's written application to medical school.
Your doctor probably took an oath to take care of everyone, to heal the sick and do no harm. The doctors I know personally take that oath very seriously. It's really, really tough on doctors when a patient dies. This is especially true for doctors just out of medical school.
A doctor does not just walk away from work and forget his patients. Doctors take their patients and their cases home with them. It's at home where doctors read professional articles, research their patients' diseases and make sure that the notes in their patients' charts are complete and accurate.
And people think they should be able to walk into an emergency room and demand that their doctor work for nothing. Sorry, guys.
If you can't afford health insurance, ask your boss for a raise. Don't ask your doctor to take a pay cut.
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