For fixing America's medical and insurance - in lieu of of free higher education, it'd be simple to drastically reduce requirements to practice medicine. To practice medicine in the United States, doctors have to go through crazy rites of passage, including years of their lives and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Groups like the American Medical Association have intentionally tried to keep the requirements very high, as that keeps doctors' fees and wages up by restricting supply.
Undergraduate + medical school + residency is way more than necessary to become a competent doctor. Could anyone really claim with a straight face that 4 years of intense study, plus 2-4 years of hands-on apprenticeship wouldn't far more than enough to practice a specific kind of medicine? People pick up many skillsets as difficult as medicine to a competent degree in a lot less than 10 years and hundreds of thousands of dollars of costs.
As for Austria, it's an interesting case, huh? Austria has one of the longest traditions of social services in Europe - Otto von Bismarck, Prussian Chancellor, was huge on it. Austria has lots of practice and does a pretty good job of offering a number of services.
There's a few downsides, though. Of course, most people have probably heard the argument about how it slows growth and innovation, and there's some truth in that. Typically people counterargue, "Yes, but it's a worthy tradeoff to improve quality of life in the present." And there's merit in that too.
But using Austria as a specific example - one of the real dangers of socialization of important elements of an economy is that it makes it much easier for the government to go totalitarian, as was seen under the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, the National Socialist German Workers' Party.
Limited socialism can work with a very strong constitution to limit governmental powers. But without that, politicians become in control of the courts, military, and economy. That's a very dangerous combination.
One of the tricky parts about socialism is that it can't adjust fast enough to fill diverse wants and needs. Governments are rock-and-hard-placed: A fast moving, fast changing government makes lots of mistakes. A slow moving, slow changing government doesn't adapt very fast.
But one thing socialism is really, really, realy good at is making what Clauswitz (another Austrian-Prussian, genius military scholar) called "total war". That's where your entire economy, culture, and civilization is focused on conquering or destroying another civilization.
Every major combatant during World War II went to a more socialized economy, including the United States and England. Government assumed control of much of the production and media. The Allies needed to, because the Germans and Japanese were that focused. One of the reasons that France fell is because it was severely overwhelmed in terms of technology: Less aircraft, less artilery, less mechanized infantry. The American and English governments saw this, and took greater control over their economies.
But could any of this have happened without government control of economies in the first place? A charismatic, psychopathic Austrian-Prussian Lance Corporal took over leadership of the National Socialist Worker's Party (Nationalsozialistische, shorthand "Nazi"), and they already had large control over the nation's factories, food, banking, education, medicine, media, and so on. The "trusting the government" culture lets the inevitable bad government run by a psychopath run amok.
You could take North Korea as another example - they have the fourth largest army in the world (fourth! despite being #47 in total population!). All they produce effectively is military, but they do a pretty good job of it.
So a bit of a tangent there - I'm with your analysis completely about why the costs are high in the United States. I just also point out the very real dangers of state control of the economy. More government power leads to an easier path to totalitarianism and aggressive war. That's one of the reasons Bismarck, a real expansionary conquerer type himself, introduced the culture of social services to Prussian Austria. It builds national loyalty, especially with government-run education. It endears the people to the government and makes them reliant on it. And it lets them flip into "war mode" easily when the political leadership wants to.
There can be some advantages, but there's quite real dangers. I share the take as a casually interested historian, and would be very happy to hear some other people's replies and analysis.