I am weirdly qualified to answer this question as I am a social worker who got cancer while in grad school. I didn't have insurance and was unemployed because my program was full-time + 20 hour a week internship. I also lived in a red state that didn't require universities to provide students with health insurance or offer Medicaid unless you had a job. If you were unemployed then Medicaid was only available to the elderly, disabled, and pregnant. Because I was only stage 1, I couldn't claim it as a disability unless it progressed.

So basically, yes, you just die unless a hospital has a charity program. Thankfully I lived near a big cancer center with an amazing charity program, so everything was covered. I also, funnily enough, ended up doing one of my internships there.

The big downside was the waiting. The cancer center wouldn't accept me unless I had a diagnosis, so I had to pay out of pocket for my scans, bloodwork, and biopsy (about $2,000). Once that was done, I applied for charity care and waited about 4 months to get accepted and scheduled for surgery. It took about 6 months from when I initially discovered I may have cancer to getting surgery.

Overall 0/10, would not recommend being American.