I nearly had my house seized by the Kentucky Department of Revenue (i.e. the state tax authority). I had to borrow \~$2,000 from my father to keep my $300,000 house from being seized and sold at auction over a medical debt worth less than 1% of the value of the house.

What happened?

In late 2017, my wife slipped on the stairs and took a tumble. She thought she'd broken her ankle. It was in severe pain. It was late in the evening, and I drove her to the emergency room at the University of Kentucky hospital.

The attending physician also thought it was probably broken, but ran an x-ray to be sure. The x-ray said it wasn't broken, so it was just a severe sprain. The doc gave her prescription ibuprofen, crutches, and instructions to rest, elevate etc.

The problems began when our insurer decided unilaterally they weren't going to cover that emergency room visit, based on the final diagnosis being a sprain. They said that was "abusing" the emergency room and a visit to a primary care physician was the proper response. Of course, there was no way to know it was a sprain without an x-ray and even the attending physician thought it was probably broken.

I was going through the appeals process with the insurance company, which they were always denying the appeals and insisting I'd "abused" the ER by not taking her to a primary care doctor. At the same time, the hospital started to demand about $2000 in payment for the ER visit. I told the hospital I was dealing with the insurance company. The hospital went from dunning letters, to internal collections (that I ignored), to "external" collections as this all wended its way along.

In Kentucky, a State Law lets any state agency set up an agreement for any debt owed to them to be referred to the Kentucky Department of Revenue for collection, where it will be treated as legally the same as delinquent taxes. As the University of Kentucky Hospital is owned and operated by the state, it's legally a "state agency", and they have that agreement.

Sure enough, I got a letter from the tax authority saying that I owe over $2000 in delinquent taxes, and records show I owe a house worth over $300,000. . .so clearly I have assets that can pay this "tax" debt. Thus, unless I pay the $2,000 to the tax authority within 30 days, the house will be seized pursuant to state law due to delinquent taxes and sold at auction to cover the tax debt.

I didn't have $2,000, but my father loaned me the money so we could keep our house from being lost over going to the emergency room for a suspected broken ankle WHEN WE HAD INSURANCE.

This was when I became rather a zealot on supporting universal healthcare.

(as a postscript, the insurance company only did that "we refuse to cover any ER visits if technically it could theoretically have been treated by a primary care doc" was literally a Trump-era rule, they started doing it during his administration, and quit when he left office. . .they did it because the lax enforcement of ACA rules under Trump meant they could do crap like that.)