Cost of HealthCare in the United States... Why does healthcare cost so much compared to the rest of the world?

Getting healthcare in the US is expensive.  It is expensive if you have insurance, I continue to see my co-pay's go up and my coverage go down.  My out of pocket expenses continue to go up as well as the number of items that are now non-covered or only partially covered by insurance continues to increase.

How do we get out of this healthcare dilemma?  How can I make my own costs go down?  In my opinion, the only way that we are going to be able to start making healthcare costs go down is to have the ability to easily find out what a medical procedure will cost from nearby hospitals and clinics before making the decision to have a procedure performed. 

We (by we I mean the entire US healthcare system) need to make finding and comparing healthcare costs easier to perform for average US citizens.  This one action would drive some of the costs for healthcare down. 

The following are realities of our current healthcare:

• Each healthcare insurance company negotiates rates independently of each other.
• Usually the reimbursement rate for private insurance is a bit less than what medicare\medicaid pay
• The costs to a person without healthcare coverage is much more expensive then the same procedure performed on a person with healthcare coverage.
• Costs for a procedure at one facility vs costs for the same procedure at another facility vary widely.

I found the following useful websites in my attempt to a solution to compare healthcare costs Minnesota.  

Minnesota HealthScores has a decent attempt at comparing costs:  http://www.mnhealthscores.org/index.php?p=cost_landing&category=all&sf=group

HealthCare BlueBook has a decent approach to this as well:  http://www.healthcarebluebook.com/page_Default.aspx

I have not seen the issue of comparing costs come up at either major political party.  I wonder if any one else has?

Lance