[maxerickson]

What does in charge of healthcare mean?

There's quite a few countries that have universal coverage with private medical providers (and maybe mostly private insurance).

For example, click through Switzerland at your link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Switzerland

Of course with the ACA, the US system looks a lot more like Switzerland than it did before (private providers and insurance, guaranteed access, individual mandate).

I wonder if this sort of comparison points to there being some less drastic regulatory changes that could be made in the US to help reduce prices.

I also wonder how much things like population density factor into US costs. We have a lot of small rural hospitals (with 24 hour emergency room coverage and CT scanners and so on). Medicare reimburses small rural hospitals at a higher rate than other hospitals (but Medicare is our most efficient spending, so probably this is not a problem).