Judging by the conversations we've been having for years on this board, I don't think HS much likes the USA's system either, like me. While it may be "private" there are many, many issues with it:

 - Your employers get tax breaks for providing health insurance. This means that your health insurance is often tied to your job. Lose your job, lose your health care. End this tax incentive, and your employer can just give you the money directly, for you to buy your own insurance with.

 - Due to the fact that most insurance comes from employers, the cost of health insurance increases, as employers can afford to pay more than employees.

 - Hospitals are forced to pay for those who cannot afford to buy health insurance/pay for their care. While this seems ethical, it causes the hospitals to drive up the cost of everybody else's care, which puts more people into the "cannot afford" bracket.

 - Government intervention in the market drives up the lower price bracket. Hospitals and health insurance don't need to lower their prices to cater for the poorest, because the Government will pay for it, anyway. It's effectively the same problem as employer-provided health care.

 - No competition between state borders. If you were able to buy your insurance from anywhere in the country, you could probably find a better deal.

 - Too much legislation in favour of the catch-all insurance model. Insurance companies are expected to pay for absolutely all aspects of health coverage. The latest thing that they've got to start providing for is contraception. Small issues and procedures cost firms disproportionately more than larger ones (for example, people demand more and more antibiotics if they're covered by their program... very few people are going to demand open-heart surgery unless it's absolutely necessary, no matter how free it is). A far superior solution would be to have insurance for the incredibly rare, incredibly expensive things, and a savings account for all the minor stuff. Legislation in the USA makes this much more costly, and difficult, to do, however.

Just because the US has a private system does not mean that there aren't significant cost considerations that increase the price of doing (medical) business in the US. Sam R Smith went over a bit of it, and I'll go over more. I worked in health care a little bit, so I did see a few things myself that made business very expensive. Otherwise, here are some other issues with the system:

1. Medicare / Medicaid ties prices to specific levels. Doctors and hospitals are 'forced' to charge specific prices for given services. Does it really cost $5,000 for an MRI? Doesn't matter. That's what Medicare/Caid will pay out. Therefore, prices tend to be tied not to the cost of doing business, but whatever the government will pay out. If you really shop around for services, you will find huge differences in price. But since most hospitals have no incentive to compete, they don't, yielding higher prices.

2. Medicare / Medicaid Compliance Costs. This was the big one for me. When I worked as a medical transport officer, our company billed Mediciad for $80 per transport (1st mile) and $4 per mile thereafter for medicare. Why so much? Compliance. That first mile required about 15 minutes of paperwork on my end + double that or more for billing at our company. These compliance costs were ones I knew of that drove up costs for such a very simple service. Throw on other compliance costs and regulations, and its very restrictive to work in the medical field in the US.

3. AMA's Cartel on Employment. Its very simple. The AMA decides who can be a doctor in the US. More or less, its a cartel. They decide everything in regards to employment for doctors in the country. Because of that, the US requirements for doctors are notoriously high when compared to every other country on earth. It requires a doctorate (8+ years) plus no less than 4 years of residency. That means 12 years of schooling at an AMA-backed college which usually means $20,000 per year. The burden here is twofold: Doctors come into practices burdened in debt, and there is not a great supply of American doctors. That is the major reason why you see so many Chinese and Indians here. Its much easier to import a doctor than train one here. At any rate, this drives up the cost considerably on paying doctors. In Japan, the average doctor makes about $70,000/yr as they require 6 years of training. Alternatively, the average doctor makes >$150,000 here. Those costs are added to your care.

4. FDA's Regulation of Goods. America has one of the most stringent standards in regards to drugs and vaccines. Because of this, pharmacutical companies have to pay incredible prices to get drugs on the market. That is why prices are so incredible in the US - they have to spend billions in R&D and testing, which requires them to recoup costs. Why doesn't Europe or Canada have these insane prices? Lets ask this: When was the last time you saw a pharmacutical company field a brand new drug there? They don't. They are secondary markets. If the FDA wasn't as stringent, you'd see lower R&D costs and lower overall costs to field new drugs.

5. Lack of Competition. Just like hospitals, there is unfair or poor competition for insurances and healthcare in the US, period. We have insane laws that don't allow insurance companies to compete across state lines. Additionally, like Samuel said, businesses get big tax breaks on insurances which stacks the deck, preventing individuals from getting care. Lack of competition invariably drives up costs as insurance companies not only cannot compete, but must field redundant offices in every state, driving up the cost of business.

6. Other Regulatory Issues. I can't go into every issue, but the government has very stringent laws on health care in the US. You have many well-meaning policies in the US that require a lot of time and money to comply with. Some estimates (from places such as CATO) put health care compliance costs at between 40 and 60% of the total cost of health care in the US (which includes possible areas of points #1 through #5).

America does have a totally free-market health care system. No FDA. No AMA. No medicare/medicaid system. In that free market, insurances don't exist because care is cheap, and so are the drugs and pills. I've been mentioning this for a long time and no one has bothered calling me out. You can get MRIs and major surgeries for less money than a day in the hospital costs. Do you know what it is? Its call a veterinary clinic. They have no rules, yet pets are no more likely to die due to the vet or its medicine than a human is, despite costs being considerably less.

Since Mrstickball and SamuelRSmith have already made most of my points for me ...

I have a real problem with this. Essentially it's because in some ways the way companies work is broken. The amount executives are paid has essentially no link to how well a company performs. A companies answer to almost every situation seems to be "increase executive pay and bonuses".

In the end it essentially comes down to the fact that the executives and boards pretty much control their own pay and so predictably pay themselves absurd sums for no good reason.

Edit: In terms of healthcare systems - I don't see why Americans are so unwilling to look across to Europe for healthcare systems that are so much cheaper and that are really quite effective. Going to a completely laissez faire system is a system that (to my knowledge) has never been tried in the developed world and some of the problems in Americas fairly laissez faire system show the problems it could cause. For example USA has a disturbingly high rate of deaths that could be prevented with basic healthcare.

Yea, they apparently had your back pretty good.  You guys would be a super team if you ever teamed up.

 It is pretty obvious that an overhaul of our health care system in USA is drastically needed.  One shouldn't be charged 20,000+ dollars for one night stay in a hospital after surgery (this happened to me and only included the hospital night stay + emergency check in (not the surgeon, mri, anesthesiologist, pathologist aka the most important part of saving my life from the appendicitis).  They billed it so high because they knew they were going to write it off as a tax rebate.  Funny how life saving procedures cost around 3,000 or so out of pocket but to rest and get a few pain pills with a nurse doing some basic vital signs tests every so often costs almost 7 times as much.  Anyways, you can thank my appendicitis for adding to the cost of overall health care since I was uninsured.  I paid (with the help of my parents) most of the people that helped save my life.  I just didn't pay for the overpriced room and drugs.

(I was going to delete this first response but I'll leave it)

That 35 dollars a week (cost for cheapest health plan my employer provides) doesn't sound like too much for someone that makes a decent wage but that is almost half of a days work for me (I make about 10.70 per hour before tax).  What sucks is that everyone wants the system to be fair (everyone should pay what I am paying).  Well the problem is why should I (someone who is almost always healthy) pay so much per week for a crap plan that I will probably never use (I don't like taking pills or going to the doctors).  I would like to have it  in case of an emergency or accident but I am to the point where I just don't care.  Someone who is obese, smoker, has a disease should pay more because they are taking prescription drugs, going to the doctors more, etc.