My wife needed her gall bladder out last year the most expensive part of the whole week-long ordeal was paying for parking at the hospital. She has private medical insurance through her work, but needing to deal with the paperwork and all that from the hospital wasn't worth the effort.

The fact that people have to choose between bankruptcy or dying of preventable illness is kinda like school shootings: the fact that you tolerate this at all - let alone having a major party campaign on "these things are actually good and you should be happy about them" - is pretty much proof that all of you are completely insane.

@catch22
If we want to go on vacation, it is strongly recommended to check the insurance not only in the USA but also when traveling to Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand or Cyprus.
According to an article in a consumer magazine, it is strongly recommended to negotiate if you have to pay bills yourself. In most cases, the costs can be massively reduced. There are also said to be specialized companies that take over negotiations, some of which are also used by insurance companies.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

When i hear these stories i think im so grateful to not be born in such a horrible country. A country that can not look after its own isnt a country i want to be in

Two main benefits/"public goods" from having your lives in a societal arrangement:

1. Having an educated population allows overall advancements that wouldn't be possible where education standards are low. If the protestant dogma of "work hard and you'll get salvation" was still prevalent in all groups we'd still be chiseling stones as that is real manly work. Intellectuality is still mostly frowned upon in the US. The whole purpose is to work less and enjoy living as the benefit of having basic needs solved for. Access to free education has plenty of positive externalities that we aren't even able to quantify. Would the US still be engrossed in its culture wars or other wars?
2. Having a healthy population allows a sense of group and care for a country. Belonging to a country should mean that your fellow countrymen have your back in time of need. Father time comes for us all. How unpatriotic it is that people proudly wave their flags whilst letting their own fellow countrymen die from preventable causes or having to face choices such as living longer and getting bankrupt or let sickness fester until perishing. Not having free healthcare from an outside perspective is as unpatriotic as you could get.

The US seems a prime example of too much emphasis on GDP and limited focus on quality of life. I'd rather be homeless in Cuba than in the US albeit all wealth and quality of life indicators are better in the US.

I just feel bad for y'all. Most Americans I've met are at least nice people who probably deserve healthcare.

Honestly? The real feeling I get from this is being scared for the future. I do know that there are powerful forces seeing a business opportunity in that status quo that can be exported. And you can see the impetus towards eroding the safety nets here following marching orders from the far right, anarchocapitalist mothership all throughout the world. In some of the countries I've lived in there is already a push towards this model, just moderated by the existence of some sort of universal health care. Sure, even the bare minimum of public service care takes a TON of the edge off. Those ER bills are what some of my friends in those places paid for, say, having major surgery or good care while having a baby... but it's a slippery slope.

I’m sure they laugh at us, then feel a bit of pity, because most of us aren’t terrible people, but most of us can’t afford good healthcare because we vote for corrupt politicians in 2-party system of basically the same options, except one loves Russia and uses abortions to seduce the religious

In Australia, it's not too uncommon to hear people have conversations about how fucked the US system is. That's partly a symptom of how intertwined my life is with the topic of medicine and healthcare systems though, I'm sure most people have far fewer discussions about those topics than I do.

Having said that, I have certainly said "Thank God I'm not in the US" and received emphatic agreement in conversations.

I've also had a doctor say "well at least you're not in the US" to me during an appointment, after I expressed some displeasure at how much something was going to cost me - because i wasn't considered a valid demographic for that specific drug to receive the subsidy.

Socialised medicine doesn't mean free medicine, sadly. And our system has been run down by the ruling class attempting to emulate the US version's money-churning machine.

First thought is that you need to do that research aa soon as you move to the new house, change your insurance or job.

Second is obvious, strange county you have over there. But I guess most of the people are satisfied with that, as with paying for school.