leaving your family with the medical bills

I was thinking the other day (morbidly) that when someone has a medical emergency like a heart-attack or major illness, you can go to the emergency room or hospital with no problem, but you get the bill later, no matter what.  my son was asking me how that all worked and I told him that basically, they send you a bill - If you don't pay it, they send it to collections, which affects your credit.
it is amazing in this country with all the buzz about health care that we can't seem to get it together like some other countries that have health care systems.  I just read an article on the nationalized health care systems in Europe and Canada.  apparently, Germany led the way for nationalized health care way back in the day.  citizens participate by paying into the system thru taxes, they have the option of private insurance in addition to nationalized health care as well.  the government negotiates the best deal with private companies to keep the costs down.  i am sure it is more complicated than all of that, but the bottom line is that it is working for the majority and the whole country is not bitching about how much health care sucks (like people in this country do.)
the problem here in the states, (in my opinion) is with politics and special interest groups who are greedy bastards. They really just care about themselves.  we see it again and again - big business that gets too greedy and get caught.  Wall Street, ENRON, Congress?  As much as everyone is complaining about Obama's health care, it is really just a big step towards nationalization of health care, which is working in other countries just fine.  we like to complain when we have to pay taxes or put more money into something, but really it is up to our government to collect taxes and then allocate some of those funds to different departments.  I would rather pay tax on having health care than paying for some other useless thing that the government decided to spend money on.  unfortunately, we don't directly participate in those decisions. The idea of allowing drug companies and medical care providers to compete among each other for government health care and supplemental care seems fine.  as of now, the drug companies are hiking up the costs, the doctors are hiking up their fees, and medical professionals are scrambling to keep up the pace.  It seems like everyone is trying hard to not lose money, so of course everything gets out of whack. 
So right now, everything is expensive and getting more expensive every day.  I looked online and the average heart attack costs about $50000 to pay for.  That is actually from a few years ago so I imagine it is probably more now. 
what sucks is that when you are faced with a life-threatening emergency, you have no choice but to seek help.  afterwards, you receive a bill big enough to put you in the hospital again.  It would be like someone told me I had to buy a new car, and if not, we will sent that debt to collections.  that just simply does not work for the majority of us. 
what's even worse is when someone goes through a long struggle and passes away.  this leaves the family with all the medical bills, along with the grief of losing a loved one. it almost makes you feel bad to get sick or need urgent care because you will burden your family with medical expenses.  this is not how it should be.