[summarite]

Taxes and insurance contribution taken from your salary.

But the actual cost reduction is that the system is not a bloated for profit world with what resembles monopoly powers (well, you are free to not go to the nearest hospital...) but instead a public good, serving the people not the shareholders.

In reasonable prices a birth in western Europe will cost something like €2000 including a few days stay and possibly pre- & post-natal care. That's the amount paid by the insurance to the hospital. In the US you easily get to $30000 for a normal birth, of which then anything up to the full amount might be billed to the patient.

If you to real cost you could calculate eg the amount of taxes that pay for tuition free medical degrees, lots of pharmaceutical research, or similar things that would in the US be part of the justification for the huge cost (high tuition -> need for high earnings for doctors -> need for high prices). But in the end it's just absurd and the US system should be a warning to anyone who thinks that such a vital public service would be better if privatised.