Causes of US and Foreign Health Costs

Vox quotes economists that the US health care prices per item are abnormally high. So other countries get more health care for less cost:
"When you’re paying the highest prices in the world for basic services, for scans and drugs, it will undoubtedly be a struggle to provide all citizens with health care...

• Americans go to the doctor four times each year.
• Dutch people go to the doctor, on average, eight times each year.
• Germans make 9.9 annual doctor trips.
• Japanese residents clock in an impressive 12.8 doctor visits each year — more than three times the frequency of their American counterparts...

When Americans do go to the doctor, we tend to have less face time or interaction with our providers.

• The average hospital stay, for example, is 5.4 days in the United States.
• This puts us roughly in line with New Zealand and Norway (5.2- and 5.8-day averages, respectively) and with much shorter stays than Canadians (7.5 days) or Germans (7.8 days).

The real culprit in the United States is not that we go to the doctor too much. The culprit is that whenever we do go to the doctor, we pay an extraordinary amount."

​DailyKos has more detail on the range of costs.

• "America’s economic competitors discovered years ago and still share today... Whether negotiated directly or through a national association of insurers, the government sets the prices for prescription drugs, tests, treatments, hospital stays, and pretty much everything else...
• Economics, after all, is the study of the allocation of scarce resources... In the face of the infinite “wants” for healthy citizens, financially secure families, well-compensated practitioners, and strong profits for private companies of all stripes, societies must choose how and why to distribute discomfort and dissatisfaction to some or all of the constituents."

​​And DailyKos quotes the Commonwealth Fund comparisons:

High spending at end of life?

In the United States, 

• 13% of medical spending goes on people who die within a year Mt.Sinai
• 25% of Medicare spending goes on people who die within a year NBER
  

This is because most Medicare spending goes on sick people (!), especially very sick people (!!), and some die unexpectedly (!). However very little spending goes on those who are likely to die soon.

• 5% of Medicare spending goes on people likely to die within a year (50% or more chance) NBER
  
• About half the people with high costs got better after an expensive treatment: heart attack, cancer treatment, etc. Mt.Sinai
  
• About 40% of the people with high costs have chronic conditions, and death is unpredictable Mt.Sinai