You suggested it was a joke and unlikely, and then said you'd need more evidence. This suggests you are skeptical that the US healthcare system works this way and that you are rejecting the claims of the article.

Anyone with experience with US healthcare would find this story immediately plausible, and the burden of proof is low. It's how Americans would expect the system to operate. Even if they hope it didn't.

Are people in the US really that literal? It's no wonder social media is in such one hell of a mess.

Doesn't anyone realize that the point I was making is that this story is just so bad and terrible that it's almost unbelievable—even by US health standards? In fact it's so bad that it would seem infeasible even in the worst of third world countries.

I say that as someone who has lived and worked in the US for periods and who has relatives living there. Even by my understanding what happened in this story it is so outrageous that people ought to be rioting in the streets over it.

What much of the world finds completely unfathomable about the US is why its citizens—citizens of a supposed first-world country—actually tolerate a health care system that's actually worse than in many third-world ones.

Edit: on further thoughts given that so many (presumably US) posters took umbrage at my comment tells me the situation with the US health care system is even worse that I thought. What beats is why so many couldn't see what I was driving at.

You here to learn why people misunderstood you? Or you here to fight with righteous anger about how it's other people's fault they misunderstood you?

Because you say the former but are acting like the latter.

I agree the healthcare system in the US is unfathomable. We're on the same page there. Maybe don't be a dick about it and we can have a productive chat?

Trouble is this problem has been known about for generations, it was a very old story when I was a kid decades ago—even back then not only US citizens but everyone knew about it. There comes a time when the only responses left are cynicism and annoyance—and of course sympathy for the victims.