I can't afford to visit the US because of health insurance costs

This comes from the website Quora and is written by Mark Pitt. I innocently thought if you did at least have health insurance in the US, you would be ok and the insurance company will look after you as the British National Health System does. Australia's system of public health care is not as good as the NHS, as I well know, with very long waits for important surgery, never mind the cost of visit to a doctor, though subsidised by Medicare, still costs a bomb. However, if you have something life threatening, your treatment will be prompt and absolutely free, as I also know.

Note point 4. In the UK a 5% chance of success would ensure alternatives were looked at and it is unlikely surgery would have proceeded.

If this is accurate, it is damning and could possibly happen to any of you American readers of my blog. 

1. My friend Mike (name changed) is a civil engineer who married his second wife following the death of his first wife in a car accident. Her car was smashed into by a garbage truck.
2. Mike’s new wife is a Pharmacist, so know the medical field very well.
3. A couple of years ago, Mike started having headaches and developed a lazy eye.
4. Mike was diagnosed with an aneurysm on his brain. Surgeons gave Mike a 5% chance that the surgery would work. Mike risked it.
5. Mike had the surgery, following by a stay in hospital of a couple of months.
6. Fluid on the brain then caused mini-stroking, so he had further surgery to slow the swelling. His lazy eye is now permanently closed.
7. After his hospital stay, he was transferred to a facility in order to rehabilitate. He stayed for a few months before his insurance company informed him they would no longer pay to keep him there.
8. Mike then went to another facility, where he stayed for a while before relapsing. A further hospital surgery ensued.
9. After discussions with the insurance company, Mike’s wife convinced the original rehabilitation center to take him back.
10. Madonna Hospital Omaha then allowed him to stay until the insurance company, again, said that they would not pay. Madonna informed the couple that “Many couples get divorced in this situation.” This, in order that the sick spouse does not bankrupt the well one.
11. Mike was transferred to a third facility where was allowed to stay until they informed his wife that their facility cannot look after Mike any longer - he is too sick.
12. Mike is now in no-mans’- land. Madonna Hospital Omaha will not take him as they risk not been paid and the current facility is little more than a convalescent home.
13. Mike is now out of insurance - his lifetime maximum has been reached and the only option is now Medicaid.
14. If Mike takes Medicaid, all of his assets, and those of his wife, will be taken by the government in order to ‘pay’ for ‘care’ that is provided under this catastrophic government plan. If Mike does not take Medicare, then imagine buying a new car every month - such will be the bills.
15. So, a 49-year-old civil engineer and he and his pharmacist wife now face a future of selling their home, depleting their savings and perhaps declaring bankruptcy due to the American health ‘care’ system.
16. Meanwhile, Madonna advertises its expert care on TV, the hospital boasts that they have the best treatment facilities in Nebraska, and the economy of Omaha is about two million dollars better off because one of its citizens got brain cancer.
17. There is no ‘care’ here unless you can pay, and where the American people are kind and generous, when it comes to health, there is one great big elephant in the room.
18. No President or Congress has ever been able to fix it because of an inherent fear of ‘paying a little tax for the benefit other people’.
19. American health technology is indeed the best in the world, but, like everything else in this land of the free, there is a fee. It’s all about that thing that does not exist, apart from an idea - a bill of exchange - money.
20. As for Mike, well, he’ll have to manage as he sits in his $12,000 wheel-chair, surrounded by paid-for drips and technology, in his new apartment that he is forced to rent due to the sale of his home.
21. It matters not that your insurance policy is maxed-out at $1 million or $10 million. Eventually, it will run out.
22. Imagine going to a country where a plate of food costs $5000. Then, when you cannot afford to pay for food anymore, you are dismissed as a nothing; a financial burden - persona non grata. You cannot keep yourself alive, you cannot afford it; you die because you cannot feed yourself and nobody gives a shit. That, my friends, is healthcare USA.
23. This shall never be fixed. Like wars, healthcare makes too much money for the millions of people who work in the field. There are too many special interest groups and lobbyists to change things; too many bribes, corrupt politicians and ineffective presidents to be able to bring change.
24. Meanwhile, Mike is literally speechless, and his schooling, college degree, patriotism, church-going and membership of the Knights Templar will not matter. His hundreds of thousands in taxes may fill a few potholes on Omaha’s dreadful roads, but it will not help him. Mike is an American patriot, but sadly, in America, the flag-waving and hand-on-heart means nothing. On the issue of health, America pleads the fifth; it says nothing.
25. Americans are a commodity; they are useful to the economy until they are not, and while Fox news propaganda hails that this is “the greatest country God gave man,” try telling that to a man who has worked all his life, only to be forced out of a system because he is unable to pay.
26. Think of the concentration camps of 1942–1945. You were either fit to work and aid the effort, or you were left to die. The analogy may seem dramatic, but then both ‘outcomes’ were determined by a tick box on a clipboard.
27. In 200 years, the USA is unlikely to be here. Empires die, as they make stupid decisions which implode. However, in 300 years, history will say, “In the USA, if you did not have enough of that paper - that ‘money’, then the people who were in charge of collecting more of the paper money put to death those who had not enough paper money to give them. Some people died, because some other people said, they were not worthy - they were not endowed with money.”
28. Thereafter, when tiny robots repair every cell in the body for free, and when work and toil are a thing of the past, people will ask, “Why did people die?” The reason shall be just the same as when people fell into mills and factory equipment during the Industrial Revolution. The reasons will be the same as why millions died in WW1 where generals ordered men to go over the top of trenches only to be shot and killed. The reason will be that the few controlled the many, until the many woke up and saw that the few controlled too much, and called ‘enough.’
29. The NHS is not perfect in the UK, but the 1940’s government freed the British public not only from tyranny but from the worry of their healthcare. In 1948, the National Health Service was born. It remains the greatest of British decisions and has saved millions from death, disease, and despair.
30. Whatever you think of the NHS, it is near and dear to the British hearts and minds. It is the Mother of the UK. Using that analogy, the USA is simply an orphan. The USA is a camera obscura - a dream-like nation. It appears to be fantastic until you see that the bleached white teeth hide a mouth full of decay.

Edit 17th April 2023.

Thank you for all of your upvotes and comment.

Steve passed away leaving his two girls and a wife. The doctors applauded the body as it passed through the halls of the hospital. Some have commented that the UK NHS would not have performed the surgery anyway? This is subjective. In the UK, costs are so much lower, so if Steve had been to a private hospital, then the bills would be much lower - we don’t bankrupt people here. Again, the USA impersonates the ostrich when it comes to healthcare. The government likes the anxiety that comes with fear, with worry - it keeps people under control and on the treadmill. It’s even becoming a burden for foreigners to visit the USA; such is the high cost of travel insurance. The system will break, the ‘let them eat cake’ attitude is too much.