[rcafdm]

But if you look carefully you will find most of this behavior plays out similarly in those few countries with somewhat more comparable wealth (e.g., Norway). The issues that many people think of as being particularly "American" problems are problems that mostly have to do with our high material living conditions (as in, diminishing marginal utility attached to other forms of consumption and increasingly high values attached to human life). Overall health expenditures are increasing equally rapidly in these countries as a function of AIC, disposable income, etc and there is no evidence they are getting any more value for their money (having a healthier populations helps naive comparisons of life expectancy, IMR, etc a ton).

Here are some papers that touch on some of these more fundamental theoretical issues:

https://web.stanford.edu/~chadj/HallJones2007.pdf

http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/showcare.pdf