Well I can't speak for all countries, but here in the UK I haven't paid a penny toward my cancer treatments. I also kept my job despite being off work for near

Well I can't speak for all countries, but here in the UK I haven't paid a penny toward my cancer treatments. I also kept my job despite being off work for nearly a year going through chemo, and I even got sick pay for all of that time. (Not at full wage, but still a very generous proportion of it). Post-treatment I went back to my same workplace, doing the same job, and found out that I had even acrued annual leave at full rate during the 9 months I was off sick, so had 25 "extra" vacation days that I wasn't expecting. Yes, this is more than the legal baseline, but even the legal baseline would let me keep my job, acrue leave, get some sick pay (although the statuatory sick pay isn't huge), but most importantly, have completely free treatment, so I wasn't spending the little energy I had worrying about medical bills or insurance.