Hydroshock believes that anyone who has fallen on dire straits apparently should just sit on the corner with a dude that looks like Tommy Chong, with a sign and a can, apparently...
You're right. Bad stuff happens even to those who are prepared. But far too many people are too shortsighted to prepare at all. A buddy of mine recently had to take out a payday loan to cope with a $150 doctor bill for his daughter. That loan cascaded into nearly $500 per month payments on a half-dozen payday loans.
So he got that all straightened out and what did he do? Did he build up a $1-2000 emergency fund? Nope. He bought a shiny new(ish) dealer-financed SUV.
He and many (most?) others have no plan whatsoever for dealing with financial emergencies.
I don’t think you should have used your emergency fund on medical bills. Medical bills can be put off for a very long time. Emergency house and car repairs cannot and neither can the paying of the bill for those repairs.
I have medical bills right now. I only allowed my medical bills to use up half of my emergency funds. After that they just have to wait. There’s no interest on medical bills.
As far a cars go, you can find a good used vehicle for about 2 grand if you look hard. i just saw a 10 year old ford taurus for $1998 today. I’m sure it had very high miles but it looked in great shape. Surely you could scrape together enough for that, or at least some kind of small loan?
Don’t you have anything valuable and liquid you can sell quickly? Like firearms, jewelry, motorcycle, rare coins, etc?