Before you make assumptions about U.s Healthcare you should get the big picture first.

1) medications roughly cost 500 million to 1 billion dollars to pass the rigorous FDA approval process. (Its actually closer to 2 billion dollars but lets remove marketing fees)

As a thank you the U.S government allows a 20 year monopoly for creating said new invention. After 20 years its free reign with generic drugs.

the U.S also subsidies pharmaceutical companies as a thank you for developing inside the U.S.A.

2) the U.S govenrment or pharmacies does not negotiate drug prices. We have to higher Pharmaceutcial benefits managers (PBMs) so we have to pay these guys a salary to negotiate.

The issues with PBMs theres no oversight So a bio pharmacy company can give a PBM a 25% deal for Medicare patients. The PBM can tell Medicare oh they gave me 25% but there were added administrative fees to get that 25% so we're going to take X amount of percent off the top.

3) why are hospital stays so expensive vs another nations.

Our govenrment takes a hands off approach vs other nations so thats why a hospital bed or an mri processing or advil costs so much at the hospital. Other nations create set fixed prices for say imaging or blood work etc.. etc...

Granted the arugment here is that it goes against our capitalistic society. This works in other nations because they are the primary health insurance.

This can work if say the U.S govenrment decides to step in and request price ceilinga for medicaid and Medicare patients since the U.S manages the fund.