After losing my job in 2010 and finding it very hard to find another, I went to Texas and stayed in a house in Houston owned by an Islamic group for women who needed temporary assistance. While there, on Black Friday after a cold rain I was walking by a construction site and slipped in the mud, which is the slimiest wet clay and worse than ice. I fell and broke my ankle. I was taken to a hospital and spent the entire afternoon sitting in the hallway of the emergency dept. I had no insurance, so all I got that day was an elastic bandage and a pair of crutches, and a single ibuprofen pill. A few weeks later, I got a bill (I left the US and stayed out for 6 years so I never paid it). The amount I owed was $4,275. Such bloated health care costs inflicted on people who can't pay them are egregious.