re: "Americans spend more on health care than anyone". What if it is due to consumer choices?

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more socialized societies have to wait for care

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They not only have to wait for care, a lot of choices are simply off the table. People conflate "socialized medicine" with the free choice to elect whatever level of care they want and can afford.
In countries with "socialized medicine", the cost of healthcare is a number on a line in a budget. The cost per person is roughly the number of people divided by that budget number. Thats what that country's healthcare costs are. In a market based care system, hundreds of millions of healthcare procedures are chosen by hundreds of millions of people.
To compare the cost of one to the other and implying one is cheaper--and therefore better-- is comparing apples to oranges.