No, not how things work...

This movie did little, if any research. At all. Front start to finish. It was a captivating story line, and amusing, but out of touch entirely. First off, skilled laborers are hardly living in poverty. Not all blue collar jobs means someone is working poor. That's a myth. Most machinist now make between 45,000 and 50,000 annually, and that means in 2002 it was roughly 35,000 to 45,000 in 2002 when this film was made. The type of work he did, usually is and was union, which most likely meant he would have had outstanding insurance, 401k, pension, and life insurance plans to choose from, and the union would have picked up the majority of those premiums for his entire family. As far as not using an ambulance to save cost, also unbelievable because his insurance would have picked that up. I have been in healthcare for twenty years, since 1998, in hospitals and ER's. My specific job was as a financial and insurance rep, and assisting uninsured patients find coverage, both pre, and post, the ACA. Not one thing that happened regarding treatment of the uninsured, how the ER received the patient, how the paramedics acted and responded to the shooting victim they left, to how hospital administration conducted themselves, was even near to reality. Besides it being action packed, dramatic, and gripping, it just isn't how things go. Not even in America's broken healthcare system.