It's smallish things like this which make me realise how lucky I am not to live in America.

In this particular case though, possibly just how lucky I am to live in Australia. Here it's either just common practice at most companies, or possibly required by law, but everywhere I've seen the leave policies provides 52 weeks a year of sick/carers leave.

Usually this is broken up into ~20 days of leave where one isn't really required to provide any justification beyond "I felt bad that day" and beyond that a doctors certificate may be required.

But that's always entirely separate to annual leave.