Holy crap, all these answers and hardly anything about how health insurance is supposed to work.

Basically, most people have health insurance. With the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) from years ago, it's basically required but getting care is simpler (you can't be denied a plan for a preexisting condition, for example. But it's hella expensive. It's also typically tied to your employer as part of your compensation package like retirement contributions, which means if you change employers there's a good chance you need to change insurance and even doctors.

ANYWAY, say you have procedures done. Insurance companies typically have contracted amounts for stuff with each provider (a "discount" from insane prices nobody actually pays). You typically pay the first however many dollars, depending on what you're having done and how your plan works. Eventually, you'll reach a dollar amount that's your maximum for the year, and from there insurance generally covers everything they normally would

Some people also have Medicare (ages 65+) and/or Medicaid (based on income or disability). Some people have private insurance on top of it. My daughter was born extremely early and stayed in the hospital for months. Her very low birth weight was a qualifying disability for Medicaid, and she was on my work health insurance. Claims would go through work insurance first, and any remaining costs (deductible) would be passed to Medicaid. If there was anything left, I'd be responsible for that. But I don't think that ever happened

Obviously, coverage is different for different people - different employers have different plans that cover different things differently. But in theory, that's how it should work.

You start a GoFundMe then die

They made a really good documentary about this a few years ago:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_Bad

You have money or insurance (if they dont deny coverage) or you die.

are you asking how we treat, or what do we pay?

many people with cancer in the u.s. go the cheapest routes for treatment because some are incredibly expensive. hospitals are only required to 'stabilize'. they are not mandated to cure. poorer people have worse outcomes as they cant afford the best treatments.

In financial terms, for most people the government doesn’t help you at all[^1]. Either your private health insurance pays some of the costs, or else you pay completely out of pocket. Even if you do have health insurance, it’s still going to cost you several thousand dollars per year until it’s resolved. It’s quite common for cancer to cause people to go bankrupt even with good health insurance.

[^1]: If you’re 1) old or 2) through means testing are found to be both poor and physically unable to work, then you get government-funded a health insurance plan. You still might go bankrupt though, just as with private health insurance.

Are you asking about the specific course of treatment, which will verify by type and stage, or how people pay?

As for paying, the only national programs are Medicare (restricted by age) and Medicaid (restricted by income). The US veterans administration is a separate govt program for military veterans and I believe their families, too. Everyone else either has some level of insurance provided by their employer (which will still generally be terrible), or nothing at all.

The charts here are helpful https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6778988/

Like most other countries, expect that a lot of people only treat what they can afford. A lot of Go Fund Me sites have been created due to expensive medical treatments.