"But none of these is her most gnawing, ever present concern. That would be the convoluted medical bills that fill multiple binders, depleted savings accounts that destroy early retirement plans and so, so many phone calls with insurers and medical providers." Is it like this in other OECD countries? I ask because I'm told that we in America have "the best health care system in the world."
My father fought cancer for the last 8 years of his life, and was on 2 boxes of Glivec a month for all those years(in US Glivec treatment costs about $146,000/year[0]). He also had 2 operations to remove some tumors, plus bi-monthly MRI to check if the cancer came back. He has never paid a single penny towards the treatment. In fact, the hospital would always reimburse him for taking the train every month to get his drugs and check-ups done. There were no bills to pay, I think he only had to sign one piece of paper every month to say that he picked up his medicine and we could go home. There were never any calls to any insurers or medical providers, simply because as patient over here you don't care who is paying for the treatment. You turn up to the hospital for whatever treatment is planned and that's about it. You don't even know how much the hospital is paying and to whom. It doesn't even matter if you are currently employed/unemployed and if you're paying towards the national health service - if you are not employed(say as a result of your illness) you are still 100% covered anyway.
After he passed away(the cancer unfortunately came back and not much could have been done at that point) his savings account was definitely not affected by 8 years of illness.
That's in Poland btw.
[0] http://www.ascopost.com/issues/may-25-2016/the-arrival-of-ge...