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I tend to focus on the labor cost aspect of US healthcare, but your second to the last point is also incredibly well-taken.
The phrase I hear that absolutely sets me off is one that starts with, "The least we can do..." when dealing with patient care decisions. The harsh reality is that the 'least' we could do, is nothing. That's where the conversation needs to start, and I think that if it did our entire society would take a different view of healthcare in general.
One thing I say to my girlfriend all the time is, "Two hundred years ago we didn't have names for 80% of the stuff that killed us. We just 'got old' and, invariably, died. Nowadays we have names, and treatments, for everything that killed the elderly a century or two ago and nobody even stops to think about whether or not we should actually DO those things."
I've seen people living in abject misery and barely-mitigated suffering whose lifespans have been prolonged, but whose lives have been completely destroyed, by the healthcare system in the USA. I've also seen people recover from afflictions which would have been utterly untreatable even fifty years ago and go on to live fulfilling, happy lives. Somewhere along the line a decision is being made (or, more worryingly, NOT being made) as to just how far we should go with healthcare delivery.
I love my grandmother dearly, and spent my entire childhood within walking distance of her house. I have countless stories of how she shaped my life, and I will forever speak fondly of her. For the past fifteen years, however, she has been in and out of the healthcare system and has cost the country over a million dollars. I'll say again: I love my grandmother dearly, and if you don't believe that it's best you keep it to yourself. But who, exactly, is paying for that care? My grandfather and her never even sniffed contributing a million dollars to the system (and I do understand the concept of earned interest, net present value of money, and other fairly basic economic principles, thank you very much), so I start looking around my family and adding up our direct contributions to social programs like Social Security and Medicare. You know what? Even if you added all of their children's contributions, they STILL don't make up the bill. You have to get down to us, the grandkids, before you can even think about satisfying the debt. So who's paying for all of this - and, more selfishly, who's going to pay for ME if I decide to avail myself of the same care late in life? (If you think that wealth redistribution, of which socialized healthcare is often recognized as being a part, is anything but an illusion then I will calmly assert that *all* costs are eventually passed on to the consumer, regardless of political rhetoric.)
This is a new problem for humans, because until the last couple of generations we haven't had access to this level of healthcare quality or availability. So I understand the delicate, sensitive nature of the situation fairly well, but we are ignoring the elephant in the room and doing so might be taking us down a very, very dangerous road.