I guess I'll give a non-horror story account from the US. My wife and I are fortunate to be on a good insurance plan though my work, we pay about $200/month total for the both of us out of pocket, and my work covers the rest.

Were on an HMO plan, so basically we have a fair bit of restrictions on which doctors we can see, and finding a new primary is always a pain.

On the brightside, medical care for us genuinely is cheap as hell (besides the insurance cost, ofc). My wife recently cut her hand in the kitchen and we had to rush her to urgent care to get stitches. We didn't pay anything at the time, and got a bill in the mail for $20 the next month, and that was pretty much it.

We've never (thankfully) had any major medical issues that need treating though, so hard to say how something like that would play out in reality.

All that being said, if I lost my job, or if my job decided they wanted to cheap out I health insurance and I was - for some reason or another - unable to get a better job, then I'd be fucked. So don't misconstrue any of this as an argument against universal Healthcare, just because it works well for me personally