There aren't many industries where price shopping is as hard as healthcare. When you remove the cost of a good so far from the actual beneficiary costs become incredibly hard to control.
Not many here will remember when the insurance markets started in the US, but the original deal was that people pool their resources and get a discount vs street rates. However now that everyone is pooled, what possible metric can you use to determine if you are actually getting a good deal?
Sure, we hear stories of outrageous bills that are sent to patients that their health insurance "covers". However, the reality is the insurance company expects a discount which has caused an opposite effect to uninsured patients. Costs go up so that the "deal" the insurance company gets looks good. All the stories about $20 pill of Advil, is all pointing to the leverage hospitals and doctors used to fight cost cutting at insurance providers.
I think there are only two ways to resolve this at this point. Build a free market solution where price transparency is required and make it easier to shop for non-emergency care, while the government continues to cover emergency visits or full single payer healthcare with the government footing the bill.
Based on the moral logic that many U.S. citizens see healthcare and life savings services as fundamental right, I think we inevitably will need a single payer system in the US. I know the desire is to see something federally mandated but I am quite surprised that not one state has taken up the idea of single payer and made it a system available to all residence who prove they have resided in their state at least X days. I'd like to see the different solutions presented in each state and let the state with the best healthcare solution win and eventually become federal.