When I was younger and made next to nothing, I ended up in the emergency room with a bill I couldn’t possibly afford to pay. I called up the billing dept and told them about my financial situation and they told me to contact Health Quest so I qualify for a discount. It was relatively easy and not only did it erase my previous debt but it gave me a 0% liability for any hospital fees for the next 6mos. The funny thing was that the hospital ended up selling my my debt to collections by that point so every time they called id fax them a copy of a letter and id never hear from them again and after a few times of them selling this debt to other collectors it just got dropped. This was in upstate NY in like 2010 so YMMV.