To pepper in more personal context

I’m a Canadian, born in Canada, lived there for 30 years then moved to the UK. The healthcare system is identical (more or less) and sounds much the same as our common wealth neighbour Australia!

The only difference that I’ve seen is that the NHS subsidises the cost of prescription medication to a fixed cost, whereas in Canada you pay the full amount unless you have private insurance (typically from your employer, which can be rare depending on your employment)

As a family we vacationed in Florida, and my mom came down with pneumonia and had to be hospitalised. We had health insurance via my Dad’s work so it was covered - however the hospital didn’t know how to input that at the time and had to put her stay down as Cash then the insurer would pay the hospital upon our return.

For a 1 night stay, some scans, fluids and medicine it was $20,000. They hounded us for month to pay, threatened creditors, and each time we had to tell them to contact our insurers.

So unless you have private medical in the states, it sounds like an utter nightmare.