Well, that was dumb. Hospitals will treat people who are unable to pay. The hospital will arrange either lowering your bill or getting a charitable organization to help. When you have absolutely nothing left to lose, there is also always bankruptcy. Since he sold every last thing, that would have been a similar fate.
The people that really get screwed are those who have enough that they don't qualify for assistance, but still have some to lose in bankruptcy. This man could have found many other avenues.
Hospitals will usually only treat uninsured who walk into the emergency room with an immediate life threatening condition.
You cannot for example walk in with cancer and demand treatment.
In the USA you cannot walk into a hospital and ask to see a doctor without insurance or some other way to pay right then, unless you find a private doctor who is willing to negotiate with you on payments (but without credit or being able to prove any income, good luck with that).
Even state assistance programs right now are so badly defunded that they will usually only help people who already have a disability status, being below the poverty level is not enough of a qualifier.
Very related: remember that unemployment numbers are a huge lie because the government doesn't count people who no longer qualify because their time was up. There are a massive number of people in a really bad situation right now.
In fact having SOME income puts you in a worse situation in the USA than having no income. But even no income without a disability right now just makes you part of the crowd and you'll rarely get help.
The thrust of what you are saying is true, but it's not quite as bad as you make it out to be.
Last summer my girlfriend was between jobs. She had a non-life threatening but potentially dangerous condition. She went to the hospital and was treated. During the period of time between jobs she had purchased a temporary health insurance policy. That policy declined to pay for the treatment. The hospital presented us with a couple of options, renegotiate the bill, accept some charity, etc. We chose to fight the insurance company and ultimately had them pay it (because it was a valid claim). But one of our options always hovering around was bankruptcy. Do you want to do that? Of course not. We would have rather cleaned out our savings and maxed out the credit cards before doing that, but it was an option.
So there is an obvious path here, get a temporary policy and use the card to get into the hospital. You will probably get denied by the insurance company for a pre-existing condition, but you can then declare bankruptcy.
Now, that is a pretty terrible way to go about it and speaks of how screwed our system is. But I would say bankruptcy is preferable to prison. And since there is that path available, I would think that this guy is mostly an activist. I think he is making a good point (about how prisoners have a right to healthcare, but not the rest of us), but the problem is that it is too easy to punch a hole in his story. Critics will focus on him instead of the underlying message.
The people that really get screwed are those who have enough that they don't qualify for assistance, but still have some to lose in bankruptcy. This man could have found many other avenues.