Here in the UK there’s an ongoing debate as to whether the NHS should start charging for missed appointments. It’d be much more like a fine, though, because no money changes hands for appointments one keeps (well, it does, but you’d have to pay tax whether you wanted the NHS or not). Seems to me perfectly reasonable that they should fine. Some doctors are very much in favour, citing figures like “non-attendance costing the health service £162m a year… 8.8m missed GP appointments last year…”. There were others, however, who worried about the “absurd debt-chasing nightmare” that fining patients would create, especially if the surgeries themselves were to get involved. But the talk has been of fines of just £10, not the huge amounts you get over there. Which is probably just as well.
It’s worth bearing in mind that I am in fairly distant touch with the news, so it’s perfectly possible that the fines have been imposed, caused massive outrage and been removed in the time since I last saw a decent newspaper.