Hmm... this contradicts everything everyone else said in this thread. I mean, everyone says that if you have insurance you have no chance of going bankrupt but it is not enough, you have to be insured for enough money in a first place, which I think might not be possible even for non-poor people and that defeats the purpose. And it's very scam prone...
My apologies in advance if that seems overly critical of US, I understand why it might look like it but, truly, it's one of those things I just cannot grasp about living there and that's why I'm asking questions, no malice intended.
I paid accident claims for over 5 years. Only a tiny percentage were a case of wrong place, wrong time, shit happens. The vast majority were either accidents waiting to happen or policy abuse, where policyholders were essentially scamming the company completely legally to cover routine chiropractic visits.
My mother is German. I have lived in Europe. I will suggest that the fact that you are European will likely inoculate you against a lot of worst case scenarios because normal American practices that promote disease and injury simply are not part of your culture.
Diet plays a very large role in disease. Immigrants don't typically start living off of fast food burgers. They continue eating largely like they did at home.
Europeans tend to drink responsibly. They have wine with dinner or drinks with friends at a pub. The US has rampant addiction problems killing people.
If you don't plan to abandon your current healthy lifestyle habits, suddenly start drinking and driving just because you set foot on US soil and otherwise abandoning all common sense as you have known it for your entire life, you probably don't need to fear that taking an American job will trap you in American medical poverty hell with no hope of escape.