Andrew Mollica and Anna Wilde Mathews:
Americans spend more on healthcare than anyone else in the world. Just insuring a family here costs nearly $27,000 a year, enough to buy a car.
The main cause: Prices are far higher in the U.S. for the same medical products and services, from surgeries to drugs.
American patients have also been using more care recently, including costly hospital treatment and expensive new drugs for weight loss. That has pushed up spending as well.
Here are some of the factors that make U.S. healthcare the most expensive.
Prescription drugs cost a lot more in the U.S.
Most other nations force drugmakers to accept lower rates, while the U.S. government generally doesn’t.