[nwah1]

We live in an aging society, so the GDP metric is misleading.

Although, we certainly do spend irrational amounts on healthcare, partly because consumers don't bear consequences for going with the pricey procedures.

There's also numerous layers of regulatory capture, artificial scarcity, and rent-seeking in order to protect various industry-wide or regional cartels. The combination of that with consumers who have no reason to care about price is a potent recipe for price gouging.

The AMA is one of those. Hospital associations, medical device associations, phamaceutical associations, electronic medical record companies, and so on all take their cut.