By way of comparison, my 63 year old Mum was having some trouble eating at Christmas time. She went to her GP, who referred her to a specialist. Took a couple of weeks to get that appointment. Mid Jan, the specialist tells her that he thinks she has a tumour, but he wants to do a laporoscopic inspection. Another two weeks. Late Jan, she has the check and a couple of weeks after that, after several specialists conferred, they told her that she had a large cancerous tumour at the junction of her oesophagus and stomach and they were going to have to treat her pretty aggressively.
Within a month she had met with an oncologist and started a three month course of chemotherapy. At the end of the chemo she had another laporoscopic inspection, and was scheduled for operation in early June. On June 9th she was opened up by one of Europe's leading gastro surgeons (I'm sure there's a proper term for that but I don't know what it is) who removed her entire stomach, and attached her small intestine directly to her oesophagus. Two days in Critical Care with a dedicated nurse sitting at the end of the bad at all times monitoring the various machines, then a week on the recovery ward. Yesterday she had a follow up appointment with the surgeon who said that they had done extensive tissue tests, the surgery couldn't have gone any better and they believe that she is completely cancer free.
Total bill: $0. And we're constantly told that the downside of that system is the extensive waiting time and poor quality of care, but I can tell you that at no point have either of those things been even remotely in evidence.