The world is replete with examples of how to deal with this problem, but I suspect the issue isn't with lack of better approaches, but rather, in the US, what you refer to as inefficiency in healthcare is the industry's profits (as in, returns to shareholders/capital, dividends, etc, not as much wages paid to doctors, nurses, etc).
Ironically, this has only become an issue of interest in recent years because it has started to cause economic stress to the middle class - i.e. many who post to this board - due to rising healthcare costs coupled with wage growth not keeping pace with life's major costs (housing, education, and of course, healthcare). Poorer segments of the population have been facing this situation for much longer, but they don't have the same voice.
Hence, ads about how we are all in this together. It would be funny to watch as I do not even know how to satire this, but it is still upsetting that it likely will work on a subset of population.
That's only partially true. Yes, rising healthcare costs. No, it hits the poorest the most, well not exactly. Medicaid isn't horrible, but you really need to be at the bottom of the income stream. Once you hit a certain age you get Medicare, which itself covers quite a bit. The people most shafted are minimum wage workers and people who work retail jobs that don't provide healthcare. The working poor. And part of this is regional, too, it should be said. For example, this debt collector stuff where they can directly deduct from your paycheck or place liens or whatnot - that's not legal in all states. Where I live, a very large city, even a homeless person can go to a hospital and get healthcare. This is a law - you cannot be refused.
The middle class have for a long time been the ones to be shafted in the U.S. They don't have enough capital or income to avoid financial insecurity (one hospital bill, one accident away from tragedy). They don't have the right jobs where they can deduct huge amounts from their income (unlike self-employed / business owners), and they don't make their income through capital investments where they can pay a lower income tax (cap gains instead of ordinary income). They're trapped in their employer's healthcare choices, and if they lose their employer their only choice are a watered-down state-managed set of healthcare options that our executive branch helped drown.
I'm not rich, but perhaps upper-income, and still a wage slave; the way I've dealt with the healthcare question is to live in the shadows of the rich (working in tech in financial services).
Once regular people have to actually start understanding the implications of the insurance they're buying, and are no longer bound by the whims of their employers with specialized employees who understand insurance jargon, I would expect massive consumer-driven simplification.
Even if you attempted to make the costs of things more transparent to consumers, there's an inherent information asymmetry between a consumer and a insurer due to the economy of scale. There's also a lot of things a consumer can't know until it's too late.
I'm working on a site that will obtain attestation from Congressional reps as to their support for M4A, and for those who don't attest support, campaign funding will be funneled to competitors of said representatives who do.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/112... (S.1129 - Medicare for All Act of 2019)
Medicare might pay the least, but I assume they must still be a net profit center if healthcare providers accept them.
Clyburn, the congressman from South Carolina whose endorsement arguably delivered Joe Biden a landslide victory, has received millions of dollars from big pharma [0]
[0] https://khn.org/news/democrats-taking-key-leadership-jobs-ha...