There are more legal risk and cost for doctor, hospital, etc.. in the US, so their insurance is (way) more costly, so their price is higher.
But I don't have any data, so that's just an hypothesis. But if this is true, good luck to change that.
(We have less doctors that we should, there are structural incentives designed to increase access to hospitals and emergency rooms in low population density areas, our insurance system is designed by the insurance companies, there are mandates about providing services that are not fully funded and on and on)
Cost controls are the reason. Providers can charge anything they want in the US. Not true in the EU.
> The notion has lived on despite copious evidence that that the so-called defensive medicine practiced by doctors merely to stave off lawsuits accounts for, at best, 2% to 3% of U.S. healthcare costs. As for "frivolous lawsuits," they're a problem that exists mostly in the minds of conservatives and the medical establishment.
> A new study led by Michael B. Rothberg of the Cleveland Clinic and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association aimed to measure how much defensive medicine there is, really, and how much it costs. The researchers' conclusion is that defensive medicine accounts for about 2.9% of healthcare spending. In other words, out of the estimated $2.7-trillion U.S. healthcare bill, defensive medicine accounts for $78 billion.
> Q. But critics of the current system say that 10 to 15 percent of medical costs are due to medical malpractice.
> A. That’s wildly exaggerated. According to the actuarial consulting firm Towers Perrin, medical malpractice tort costs were $30.4 billion in 2007, the last year for which data are available. We have a more than a $2 trillion health care system. That puts litigation costs and malpractice insurance at 1 to 1.5 percent of total medical costs. That’s a rounding error. Liability isn’t even the tail on the cost dog. It’s the hair on the end of the tail.
Even at the 10-15% number, that's meaning the vast majority of costs still come from elsewhere.
Not the cost of actual malpractice lawsuits
> That puts litigation costs and malpractice insurance at 1 to 1.5 percent of total medical costs.