your health insurance is tied very much to your employment.

For nearly half of Americans on Medicaid and Medicare, it isn’t,

That doesn’t really apply for a foreigner looking to immigrate. But its still worth noting that there is a lot of government involvement in health insurance.

cross-gender interactions

Are you an alien lifeform that is learning how to interact with humans?

Being on vacation somewhere is different than living somewhere.

Its even more different if you have to live there like the locals on a local salary.

You also had a local helping you out and was probably able to direct you away from shady food vendors, could help you out if you ever had a situation with the police, presumably she speaks fluent Spanish, etc…

Anyway it sounds like you two have very fundamental issues to face, and these issues are probably larger than “where do we live?”

If we were hungry, we would walk to a bunch of different food stands to buy fresh ingredients and would have a delicious meal,

There’s many parts of the world where this is possible, including a good chunk of the US

If you’re capable of making $150k a year you aren’t going to be living out of your car and dying in the cold in the US. And outside of highly skilled individuals you probably won’t be making $150k in most countries this sub focuses on