Delving deeper into character's motivations one thing I always find helpful is to imagine the person as a child, imagine them at a very early stage, prior to having all of the things taken away from them, or all of the habits put onto them that they end up having, and then going from there.
The essence of a government health care system - for people who have never lived under it and don't know - is waiting, waiting, waiting. You wait for everything. You wait for years for operations that are routine in America.