Some thoughts:

The litigation culture in the US drives up healthcare costs. This is partly owing to individual risks not being socialised. In Europe, if you become disabled, welfare will take care of you. In the US, somebody responsible must financially compansate you. (To put it very schematically, but the mechanism is there, and not just in healthcare)
Are European healthcare costs shifted to social welfare costs? Americans by contrast pay less for welfare, more for healthcare. Is a good deal simply a matter of where costs appear? I lack numbers, but I expect so.
(There are pro's and con's to either system. For the proponents of individual responsibility - which always at first glance sounds the more reasonable choice - the following joke, that I unfortunately don't know how to tell well: a man falls down on a New York pavement in agony, grabbing his heart with his hands. One man rushes towards him, another flees the scene. The former is a lawyer, the latter a doctor)


Surely, (insurance for) litigation can not account for several percent of GDP? Litigation is rampant in the US, but it can not account for the huge gap in healthcare spending between the US and other developed nations. I need numbers. (We are in dire need of statisticians and number crunchers in this thread!)


Capitalism has two meanings. Free market, and putting the interests of corporations first. American families suffer because they believe that what is good for corporate America, is ultimately good for them. The medicinal-industrial complex knows otherwise.
Free markets are great, therefore corporations will do anything to destroy them. The federal government ought to resume control of the healthcare market and put better incentives into place. Currently, they work to the disadvantage of the people.


The US scores very low on international healthcare comparison lists. Infant mortality and the like. Yet, America also scores near the top on other lists. I think this is more a matter of income distribution than healthcare. Simply put, poor babies die out of want, and the well-to-do have a $100.000 heart surgeory.
This is a cultural difference, a political and societal choice. Not a matter of disorganised healthcare.