well not every other nation, but i know what you mean.
other nations are much better at managing overutilization by denying care where it is not needed. the US insurance system shields people from cost and encourages overutilization due to a number of stupid policy choices (aka refusal to have 'death panels' like in Canada/UK but also refusal to do away with massive publicly subsidy for health expenditure).
for a personal story, my parents basically get free MRIs from the state for little reason whereas people I know have to pay an arm and a leg for MRIs because their insurance is worse. at minimum, we could at least also make my parents have to pay an arm and leg for useless MRIs and doctors would stop encouraging them or lose patients.
[0]https://www.vox.com/2014/9/4/6104533/the-125-percent-solutio...
[1]https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/industries/summ...
[2]https://www.fiercepharma.com/marketing/hey-big-spenders-phar...
Economies of scale should make them cheaper. An MRI machine and technician that sits there unused half the day has to charge more per visit than one used all day long. Have too many customers? Get more machines and techs, now the MRI manufacturer is making more units, offering volume discounts...
Rationing of care doesn't explain why the individual units of care are themselves much more expensive. Compare inhaler prices in Canada vs the US, $10 in Canada $100 here[0], that isn't because too many of them are given out. It's theft.
Addendum: Further, the young and healthy ration their care quite a bit under the current system, they are taxed too heavily (to pay for the care of the elderly) to afford it for themselves so they go without.
[0]https://www.usnews.com/news/healthiest-communities/articles/...
you need someone willing shop and pick the cheaper options for competition to bring down prices. You also need someone willing to say "that's too expensive, I wont buy it" and walk away. Same is true for the inhalers. If someone will pay $100 before switching to the generic, that is what they get charged. In Canada, the state is only willing to pay $10, so that is the price. This is the demand side of the problem.
There is also a supply problem, where the state provides medical company monopolies through "certification of need". It is basically illegal to open an MRI clinic that would compete with an existing one in many jurisdictions.
https://radiologybusiness.com/topics/medical-imaging/magneti...
It's like when people claim that other countries have worse medical systems because they have to wait, as if my friend didn't just wait 2 months for a simple injection recently, and my mom isn't waiting 2 weeks for an MRI after a stroke.
The vast majority of people who insist we have the greatest healthcare don't even go to the doctor's regularly. Because they were raised in a system where going to the doctor is something you have to weigh the cost of! We have worse medical outcomes simply because people wait until a cheap situation turns into a shitty and painful and expensive situation.
human intensive things like medical care are characterized by diseconomies to scale when viewed from the whole industry perspective and baumol cost disease. overutilization makes the problem much worse