Joe, first of all, I'm sorry that you've been in such excruciating pain and watching your quality of life decline. I truly hope you can find good care providers and achieve healing. Even if you must resort to "medical tourism" to find it. ;)

Your piece reminds me of one of Bernie Sanders' talking points: namely, that centralized, government-sponsored, UNIVERSAL healthcare would actually carry lower operational costs than what we currently have in the States — because the mess of competing bureaucracies across various insurance companies eats up a lot of time and thus makes the paperwork side of healthcare wildly cost-ineffective.

Honestly, all of this is one of the chief reasons why I currently live in Germany. No, the system isn't perfect here either — the fact that public and private insurances exist side-by-side inspires some doctors to try to game the system by encouraging unnecessary private treatments, or to refuse publicly-insured patients altogether — BUT:

A) healthcare here is high-quality while being SO much cheaper (I've had 2 ER bills to the tune of about 70 USD apiece.), and

B) Germany itself believes SO MUCH in the value of arts-and-publishing freelancers that it pays into their (our) health insurance plans. I wish more countries would follow suit.... or, better yet, just adopt universal healthcare in general.

Wishing you well, Joe, and glad you at least have good people in your life to lend their support through your ordeals.