The US is the only first world country that has these problems. You don't need to come up with a fancy solution, just copy what another country does. It's not like it can get worse.
The US isn't the same as the rest of the first world (outmoded as that term is).
A disproportional amount of research and medical industry happens in the US. In a way, many of the developed nations' medical systems are made possible by the American medical economy. We end up paying for more of the development and exporting our technology for as much as we can get. The cost structure wouldn't be the same worldwide if America switched.
We have 50 states. Each one of them is capable of setting up a single payer healthcare system on it's own, yet none of them have. Not for lack of trying, but none have been successful. I don't think we should even have the national conversation at all until at least one state finds success implementing it themselves.
There are a large number of medical companies outside of the US as well. Additionally governments encourage research in general through patents and subsidies and provide direct funding. Not to mention that a lot of research happens at universities. Additionally many of these companies are located outside of the US.
Ignoring all of that just from a purely financial perspective, the amount of money spent on health care simply can't be explained through research, both in quantity and when it comes to the reality of what people actually pay for which treatments.
Medical research doesn't explain why people think twice about calling an ambulance or go as far as taking a taxi or driving themselves or a loved one to a hospital in an emergency. If you do that in Germany, you'll get a lecture and will be considered an idiot who has unnecessarily endangered themselves.
So the answer is "American consumers are suckers who are paying for the rest of the world, and there's nothing we can do about it"?
How about US prescription drug marketing costs (something that's illegal in most other countries)? Drug marketing costs are similar or higher than R&D costs in many cases - why does drug marketing even exist?
Drug marketing isn't illegal in most other countries, just marketing to consumers. You're free to market to physicians pretty much everywhere which is where the real money is spent anyways.
In Germany marketing to physicians is legal but doctors are effectively forced by insurance agencies to prescribe whatever drug is the cheapest equivalent unless there is a medical reason not to.
So even though there is marketing going on the actual effect is rather minimal.
