peilthetraveler,
I live in Brazil since around 1999 and some things are relatively cheap here, but overall it's expensive. Basic food is cheap, generic drugs are cheap and some services are cheap.
Anywhere in the universe where there are structural deficiencies, something will exploit this. It goes for everything - physical, biological, social, logical, environmental, knowledge, argumentation - any phenomenon.
US health services are structured for robust health insurance, social acceptance that medical staff are highly valued - and thus a particular and extraordinary incident attended is not part of this system, thus easily exploited. US health services are not structured to handle private services, except in the cases of plastic surgery and other superficial fringe services. There are inefficiencies in the current system, and there needs to be some will to acknowledge and then correct these imbalances.