The NSA does not illegally spy. Congress has given them large authorizations to collect data and they need FISA approval before tapping Americans. 99.9% of the good work that NSA does will never be seen by the public.
It would be interesting if everybody just pulled an Elon and when Wapo asked for comment they would just say something like "Tell Jeff we say hi". It completely takes the moral high ground from the journalists.
NSO Group is dead at this point. They fucked with the wrong people. Hacking human rights advocates is fine but when Presidents and PMs start getting their phones hacked I am sure they will implement legislation to outlaw this type of software.
Their biggest customers are middle eastern governments according to the WaPo article. US certainly has bought the software but it's mostly Saudi, UAE, Qatar, etc. US has NSA so they don't really need some software. Middle eastern powers dont have the same type of technical expertise to develop their own in-house.
In addition you are comparing somebody who has insurance (slovenia) to somebody who theoretically doesn't 'US'. Most people in the US get their health insurance through their employer and would pay nothing out of pocket, and if you are uninsuranced the drug companies will often times just give the drug away to you for free.
You would have paid less in taxes and it would have been free besides maybe a small ish deductible although you typically hit that through doctors appointments, drugs etc. The people who are screwed by the american system are the poor people make too much for medicaid. Everybody else generally likes their insurance.