@izzythepush,
<agree>
I've worked in two of the US's best hospitals, in different roles of course, when I turned sixteen until I was 34, then in a major laboratory that has since been subsumed to an even more major one. I made a move to another profession, taking classes in it for 4 years after work and interning, in my 40's. Still glad I did that, years of liking my work more.
I've also been in the low end of the rope economically, some of that my fault for choosing a profession that was, for practitioners, a fits and starts proposition, a bit like construction in general re ups and downs. Still, I loved it.
I bought my own bloody insurance. At almost sixty and later, I got some bang up stuff, two breast cancer surgeries that worked out but were expensive, and five eye operations (medicare helped with the 6th). I became insurance poor, they never just paid all of it, the insurance due spiraling, and that instituted long term money trouble por moi..
Some years ago, I remember Robert Gentel talking about his needing to go to the hospital, in Costa Rica, and the great care he got; in some then or later discussion, he said that there were layers to that, re levels of care. Those aren't his words, just my memory.
I can imagine easily difficulties there too, but, hell, I'm interested in their system.