The one item missing here is a hot-topic of mine: emergency care. Not only are emergency services as expensive as the rest of medicine, but worse than that is the providers have a legal responsibility to care for the individual, who in turn has zero responsibility to actually pay the bill.

The other missing factor is that in a lot of cases, medicare/medicaid don't actually cover the actual cost of the procedure/service being provided; this leads providers and practitioners to charge more for those with better insurance in order to keep their businesses afloat.