"No money, no operation"

I was reading Michael Caine autobiography, "The elephant to Hollywood". At a certain point he's in living in LA, and his wife becomes suddenly ill. She had a burst appendix, one of these "you have surgery on a couple hours or you die" situations. The thing is once they get to the hospital and she's properly diagnosed, Caine is asked $5000 beforehand for her operation, and he's literally told; "No money, no operation". Eventually he realizes that he belongs to the actors Gild, so the operation is covered, and everything was alright. But I wondered, does (did) the US health system really work like this? Will a perfectly curable person be left to die just because a forward payment can't be done? For context, this happened in LA probably in the 60s or 70s.