If you have the ability to find other jobs, go on holiday, join the army etc, you are by definition not a "wage slave," merely a wage laborer.
[Follow-up: On a serious note, I know that's an obnoxious reply, but I'm sick of conservatives who somehow believe the problem is that people are spending too much on unnecessary things. There is some of that, but most bankruptcies come from the big-ticket items-- housing, healthcare, and education-- which ought to be affordable.]
Perhaps this abuse of the language should be called "verbal bestiality".
The state of the American proletariat is not quite slavery, but it's getting there. It's a state of diminishing leverage that, uncorrected, will lead to a slave economy. In first-world countries like the EU and Canada, it's unimaginable that someone would lose everything because of a health problem. Now, if you want to avoid (err, make less probable) this fate, you have to get a job that provides health insurance. (Don't even get me started on the terrorist attack we call the individual health insurance market.)