You have a good point, USA healthcare has the worst kind of regulation: it did lots of damage and helped very little.
But Western European countries (which you probably compare to) had an immense, unspoken advantage: an incredible supply of highly educated, unexpensive health care work force - the Eastern Europe.
If you want to truly compare the healthcare of USA with Europe's please include countries like Bulgaria, Ukraine, Serbia, Romania, Moldova and so on. Yes, it's cheap. But you truly get what you pay for.
You want to compare the richest country in history with Moldova? I'm not sure I see the point.
My point was very simple. Out of all of the world's developed countries, the USA is the one with the most expensive healthcare, despite less regulations. My point was that regulation by the government does not lead to "incredibly more expensive healthcare", as you have have stated.
From there, comparing the USA to Bulgaria is simply beside the point, the conversation was about regulation leading to "incredibly" higher costs.
And my point was just as simple: those developed countries enjoy the benefit of cheap, educated doctors from Eastern Europe. Without them, their health care would be much more expensive.
So, in the end, you're accepting that regulation is not the determining factor then.
Not even sure what exactly you think the proportion of foreign-born medical staff is in Europe. As far as I can find, the maximum is ~30% in the UK, while in Germany is 7%. But either way, to think that this is somehow the reason why Americans pay way more than anyone else for basic stuff like insulin and medical bills is ridiculous in my eyes.
Even if what you say is true for Western Europe, there are other countries (pretty much all) with highly-regulated healthcare and they all pay less than the US. But I'm sure there's some niche reason for why that would never work in the US.
You can't compare Eastern Europe like that, though. Romania has a GDP per capita of 1/6th the US one and it spends a pitiful percentage of its GDP on healthcare, about 5%. The US spends 18%. So the US has 18 times more money (!) for healthcare.
The other ones are even worse, Moldova's GDP per capita is 1/20th the US one. So probably 30 times more money spent by the US on healthcare.
It's like comparing a maglev train to the original steam locomotive :-)
You are ignoring what EE countries spend on training countless health care workers who then emigrate and work as cheap and highly educated in the West.
And health care cost increase exponentially with quality, not linearly. Bleeding edge research and medical advances appear in the USA mostly. And mostly everybody enjoys the fruits.
But Western European countries (which you probably compare to) had an immense, unspoken advantage: an incredible supply of highly educated, unexpensive health care work force - the Eastern Europe.
If you want to truly compare the healthcare of USA with Europe's please include countries like Bulgaria, Ukraine, Serbia, Romania, Moldova and so on. Yes, it's cheap. But you truly get what you pay for.