There is no good reason the US can't bring down healthcare costs, but there are also some not so good reasons that some countries have very cheap healthcare.
Genuine question, how are you so confident that reducing prices from current levels wouldn't cause unintended consequences like causing innovation to stifle, hiring to become more difficult, or health infrastructure to degrade? You can point to other countries having lower prices, sure, but just like you said - there are plenty of reasons why other countries can be cheaper than in the US.
Because we have inefficiencies that are baked into the status quo. Insurers, for example, provide little value to health outcomes. Their purpose is purely financial, and there are much more simple ways to shift that money around that requires less administrative overhead, and allows prices to be set by better methods than threats by insurers, which is basically how they're set now.
That's a very fair point. I think transparency in pricing for medical services would help out a lot with cleaning up the insurance mess. Not that either of us have the answer, have you put in any thoughts on how to eliminate those inefficiencies?