Those visits stayed with me. I saw families who had been waiting weeks — sometimes months — for basic care. Mothers who had walked hours with sick children. Elderly patients who had never seen a specialist, not because the care didn't exist, but because the system was never designed to reach them. Equipment that didn't work. Devices that failed quietly, with no one to notice until it was too late.

I was young, but I understood something clearly: the people who needed healthcare the most were the ones least able to speak up when it failed them.

When I came to the United States, I expected a different story. And in many ways it was — the infrastructure, the technology, the investment in healthcare innovation is unlike anywhere else in the world. But the problem wasn't gone. It had just changed shape.

Here, the barrier isn't always distance or poverty. It's friction. It's cost. It's a system with too many players, too much red tape, and too little coordination — where a patient can have insurance and still fall through the cracks. Where a life-saving device exists but the path to reach the person who needs it is buried under layers of approvals, intermediaries, and bureaucracy. Different problem. Same human cost.