We do have many clinics throughout the country that provide free and/or reasonable medical checkups. Unless of course you live in a very rural area that only has one or two doctors. I can only speak from experience within a few states as I have not lived in all of them.
As an example for the level of care for the poor. I had to drive a nephew to the hospital at the first of this year. He had a tooth abcess that he had known was there for more than a year. So for more than one year he failed to address the tooth situation. Instead of spending three hundred dollars to get the tooth cared for he opted to let it go. It is not like over a years time he could have not saved the money or made payments in order to have this problem addressed.
He awoke one morning with a swollen face and went to a local dentist. This dentist gave him antibiotics and of course charged him $60.00. By then it was too late. Antibiotics would not take care of the problem. A few days later when I saw him he was on my parents couch very sick(in Idaho). One side of his face was almost doubled in size. The infection had gotten so bad his next and shoulder were also swollen with the infection. He looked as if his face was a balloon and the air had over flow into the neck and shoulder.

He had spoke with an oral surgeon at this point and made an appointment. Fact is this 24 year old was going to die if he was not treated.

I drove him 45 miles to this oral surgeon's office. The doc told him, "Well a thousand dollars down payment for me to treat you." This kid makes an average of maybe $20,000.00 a year. Out of that he pays for food, gas to get to work, repairs to keep a vehicle operating so he can work, general living expenses, child support and of course his form of entertainment (beer and the local pool hall one night of each week). He really has very little left over at the end of the day and not enough to support living in a house or an apartment of his own.

This doctor that tells him a $1,000.00 or go home. The doc has to pay for his own living expenses, a new porshe, a building to work out of, a staff to run his office, monthly office utilities, insurance in case someone sues him, insurance for his building, a loan payment for the furnishings of his upscale office and his student loans. So he needed a $1,000.00 down payment to begin treatment. The doc sends my nephew out to the car to tell me he needs money or else. My nephew asked me what do I do? My parents on the other hand where in Utah at the University hospital. Dad had an aortic anuersym and was in major surgery at the time. Dad a twenty year cancer survivor from bladder cancer. Doctors say he got from most likely working at a Nuke plant in his working history.
I tell my nephew go back in there and tell the doc simply you do not have it and I will be driving you to the emergency room.

The doctor had a sudden change of heart. He gave the nephew an admittance slip to the hospital.

The thing is the emergency room would not and could not have turned my nephew away. Here any hospital that was built with federal funds must by law treat any emergency situation regardless of the ability to pay.

Is the nephew a bum, no not totally. Bright enough to work but not bright enough to realize you need to take care of health issues asap. Can he afford an insurance plan that charges $350.00 a month? Of course not he can barely keep his child support paymnets made and the employers he has are surely not going to pay for an insurance plan for him. He has little to no highschool education. His mother was a street walker and he was thrown out of her house at fourteen. He has three children in three different states. Employers simply want his youth and braun to exploit for their own gain and many in this society would call him a bum or no good.