Spain is lucky that it gets around 20% of its economy because of nice weather (tourism + foreign real estate buyers) but I don't think it's enough to sustain the quality of life if there are no reforms.
When I first came here I literally spent 2 days sleeping outside as I couldn't afford housing, and had very rough 4-5 years before I even got my first programming job. Today I'm financially independent though, and it's probably all thanks the type of environment Spain has fostered together with my own willpower, compared to the environment in the country I'm from where it'd be short of impossible to do what I did, with zero education.
I think it depends on what you compare it to. Plenty of places are way worse, and many other places are surely better. It's definitively possible to achieve amazing quality of life even if you aren't "already set", even outside of government jobs (that don't even pay that well anyways).
Isn't this applicable to pretty much everywhere now?
As for healthcare... that's a mixed bag... you can go to the ER and you will be treated, but the bill afterwards may or may not be impactful... There have been some improvements, but the healthcare lobby is massive, and pretty much stops most reasonable and some unreasonable improvements.
On public transportation, it varies... you need to realize that the main part of the US is by itself about the size of Europe... I would assume there are plenty of areas of Europe where public transit is likely limited. Not even getting into Alaska, which is by itself massive and largely unpopulated. It's probably better to compare individual US States to EU nations in terms of transit.
I definitely couldn't handle working that much today. I've also got some serious health issues that aren't being addressed. That said, I don't feel that the US can handle socialized medicine well, and the best that we could do is take the spend that is already in place with the govt and establish a first party option to compete with commercial providers that anyone can buy a plan from. I also think that there are single-payer approaches and fiduciary requirements for insurance carriers could go a long way combined with such an approach as opposed to a whole sale socialist takeover.
Yes, the US healthcare system is insane/dumb. But the stupidity of it can just be stated matter-of-factly without inventing falsehoods like "life ending $1,000,000 debt for the uninsured."