The $1,500+ ambulance bill still existed, I still paid it, and my kid wasn't even born until five+ years after the ACA came into force. The insurance company was "nice" enough to let me count it towards my kid's deductible for that year, but I paid every cent.
Stop using "victim blaming" as a way to shut down discourse.
In every country in the world people run scams. Universal healthcare would make these particular kinds of scams a lot harder, but I guarantee you, you could still find this kind of anecdotal evidence of criminal behavior relating to healthcare.