Not paying your bills is punishable by death. The utility had already arranged to have someone go out and shoot her, but then they decided to save money on the hitman and just cut off her oxygen.



But seriously, in the US you can notify the utility that you have life support equipment, and your power will not be cut off for non-payment. Also these kinds of systems should have back-ups for power outages and alarms to let you know that the power is off so that you can make "other arrangements" for your life-saving oxygen.