1. Expensive/prolonged end-of-life care (for both elderly and severely premature babies)
2. General practice of medicine as being pre-emptively over protective from lawsuits (over-ordering expensive radiologic studies, blood tests, etc)
3. Litigious society causing #2
4. Lack of competition across state lines for insurance companies and lack of competition from international generics for medications
5. Hospital and insurance administration costs (which is where the largest amount of the money goes)

We, as a society, want the best of the best always available without waiting or expense...we can't have everything. I feel like if we could address these issues, at least #1-4 (as should be worked out by the market), we'd drastically reduce cost.