The costs are absurd because of insurance. People are too isolated from prices and all the money the government pumps into the system inflates prices.
The whole healthcare cost problem would disappear almost immediately if people paid medical bills directly and were reimbursed for only the truly unforeseen medical expenses. If doctors and hospitals were forced to compete on price like normal businesses, costs would plummet. It's the lack of a real market that's the problem. What other business has no prices out on display or in advertisements? Try calling up a hospital and asking the cash price for a procedure. It typically doesn't even exist; they're only set up to bill insurance companies and the government at different rates.
"Healthcare in the US is socialism without a central plan and capitalism without markets or prices."
You're at least partly right. Some treatments would plummet, some would remain expensive. We really have no idea, the market is so distorted and the perfect system will always be subject to debate.
In my opinion, we can't ever have a true capitalist market for healthcare because the price elasticity of demand for some treatments is so high.
Another phenomena that raises the costs is the haphazard and/or non-existent approach to capping the value of awards in malpractice suits. It's a secondary manifestation of the separation between the people choosing the price and the people footing the bill.
I'm not an expert, but what from what I've gathered the outcry over malpractice suits is misplaced. There truly is a massive amount of medical malpractice.
In the U.S. an appendectomy can easily run you $20,000, and this is one of the most common non-elective surgeries.
Then look at car accident stats and the cost of trauma care.
Then look at new cancer incidence rates (there will be ~1.3 million new cases next year - CDC) and treatment costs.