Its really, really hard to have a social health system when basically everyone is morbidly obese, drug addicts, alcholics, smokers, or illegals. Or some mixture of the bunch.
Look at Britain, yeah sure you won't get into debt if you break an arm, but you're rolling a dice if you don't ever get treated in the first place, or a laughably incompetent migrant doctor fixes your arm in the wrong damned position.
The NHS's problems are threefold:
1. Government interference every few years, with most being complete reversals of previous decisions. It's literally like telling someone to drive right, then go back and drive left, then go back and drive right again. sigh
2. Mismanagement of finances. The guys running the upper echelons of the NHS are, to be frank, fucking
clueless. They would rather spend several million on, say, giant granite rocks for hospital lobbies/decorations than spending on hospital upgrades, new drugs, and equipment. Or, ya know, even
basic raises for staff.
The system itself is overly convoluted -- You have A reporting to B, who reports to C, who reports to D, when all you really need is A reporting to D directly. It saves time and money.
3. We've got too many people for the infrastructure to timely support. And, yes, it's not an "alt-right talking point" when the blame mostly falls on a) the NHS not being scaled as quickly as needed over the decades in comparison to how it has been and b) too many fucking "refugees"/migrants coming over and putting strain on the system. We have too many people, and it's also straining our electrical infrastructure, our roads, our water supply networks... pretty much
everything.
Of course, saying this out loud has you labeled as being a "Nazi", but it's pretty much the truth.
At the moment, I'm on a treatment path with the NHS -- I went from a GP referral, to a specialist, to a private
high-end specialist all on the NHS' dime, in about two years, with my treatment/diagnosis likely to be next year (so three over all). All it cost me were train ticket/petrol costs, which came in total to under £200.00.
It should've taken just one, or even under that, but the poor bastards are proverbially being swamped by the amount of work they have because, surprise surprise, there are too many fucking people in the UK for the current system.
In America? I'd be in medical debt until I died in like (hopefully) forty or so years. Literally.
Edit: Also, public health in America is pretty poor, but it is in the UK, too. We see expressions of this in things like "fat pride" -- sorry, I meant the (hijacked) "body positivity movement"-- instead of people just being more healthy and active.
Except this is not a case of the healthcare system being broken. This is an old athlete problem. Athletes often are forced to retire early because their skills are all things age can take away from them.
Also this isn't a broken leg, she is on life support. That is very much the expensive sort of equipment that is luxury medical care.
Sorry, but this is literally just another excuse I mentioned before; being ill shouldn't put you in medical debt for years, if not until you die, no matter what treatment or equipment are used.
I've seen happily married couples divorce (but stay together) not because they fell out of love or for some other reason (asinine or not), but because Partner A didn't want Partner B to be saddled with their medical debt when they died (even if it were in like ten, twenty years).
Your system is broken and is kept broken.