My understanding is a lot of difference in healthcare spending in Europe v USA can be explained by the cost of pharmaceuticals and the fact that we have fancier (read more expensive) stuff.
The pharmaceuticals pricing is due to the factor that pharma companies believe they can charge higher prices in the US than anywhere else so the US consumer effectively subsidizes the rest of the world. I'm not sure how to solve this problem in a way that lowers prices AND maintains availability of the drugs. The obvious solution is to demand that pharma companies lower prices in the US, but (assuming they are unable to increase prices in Europe) this will just lead to some (many?) drugs not being profitable and reducing availability of drugs for all.
As for the fancier stuff, we do want to have fancier stuff. That means you get better healthcare outcomes for some pretty sick people. We should not want to cut that out. We're in trolley experiment territory when you start discussing whether it is better to have a life-saving, but expensive, procedure available but not everyone can get it because of cost or to not have the procedure available at all for anyone.
There is absolutely 100% of the same stuff used in the US, just fancier names.
Other countries reduce cost by having the state negotiate instead of many small insurance companies all negotiate separately. This is why other countries get a better deal because they offer a larger base of future sales.
Don't the Swiss also have very fancy stuff, though?
But yeah, drug pricing might be a significant part. I'm not sure about the reduced incentives for pharmaceutical companies, though? From what I understand the system is very inefficient, there are a lot of middlemen (i.e. waste) involved and price discrimination going on so a lot of that money might not necessarily be going to the drug companies doing the research.
The pharmaceuticals pricing is due to the factor that pharma companies believe they can charge higher prices in the US than anywhere else so the US consumer effectively subsidizes the rest of the world. I'm not sure how to solve this problem in a way that lowers prices AND maintains availability of the drugs. The obvious solution is to demand that pharma companies lower prices in the US, but (assuming they are unable to increase prices in Europe) this will just lead to some (many?) drugs not being profitable and reducing availability of drugs for all.
As for the fancier stuff, we do want to have fancier stuff. That means you get better healthcare outcomes for some pretty sick people. We should not want to cut that out. We're in trolley experiment territory when you start discussing whether it is better to have a life-saving, but expensive, procedure available but not everyone can get it because of cost or to not have the procedure available at all for anyone.