I'm with you, SF, on the points you're making. Unquestionably a healthier lifestyle will reduce the need for expensive health care that in effect is a response to the consequences of some very unhealthy behaviors.
This will of course only address a few of the problems that the system faces, but perhaps it's a start.
Schools are becoming increasingly conscious of the nutritional content in cafeteria offerings, and seem to be taking steps to reduce empty calories and increase nutrition. There are a couple of things more that the school systems could do, relatively inexpensively, and these might help a lot to promote a healthy lifestyle.
One, when I was in both primary and secondary school, we had a class called "Health", connected to the PE courses. In that we learned a lot about nutrition, daily requirements, anatomy and physiology of nutrition, etc. I understand that such classes are rarely offered here, and my younger sister's apparent ignorance of some of these topics suggests that her schools didn't offer them either.
Two, I've read recently that many schools are actually scrapping their physical education/gym classes. These should be reinstated immediately. Exercise not only tones growing muscles, it increases blood flow and is a great help to learning.
The cost of a medical education is astronomical. A friend of mine says that he won't have finished paying off his loans for tuition/fees until he's over 45 years of age. It's unreasonable to expect people to go through all this training for several years (8 years formal education plus x years residency depending upon the chosen field before a physician may begin to practice) without the expectation of an extremely good compensation at the end of training. We should be focusing more on recruiting the very best candidates, not just those who can afford to pay. Physician incompetence is a subject for another thread, however. In the meantime, check out the costs of a medical education at this link:
http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/usnews/edu/grad/rankings/medindex_brief.php
It's easy to blame "big Pharma", and certainly they aren't entirely innocent, but pharma is only a part of the whole. As SF pointed out (I think) the costs of drugs that make it through all the testing to FDA approval reflect also the costs of developing all those drugs that never make it that far. Case in point: we're testing putative antipsychotic drugs that act selectively on the mesolimbic dopamine system, but before we get a drug to test it has to go through all sorts of cardiovascular safety tests. Many fail. That's expensive no matter how you calculate it. Our tests may bring a drug closer to clinical trials but this is only one small step in the process. Every drug goes through this testing procedure.
We have the most sophisticated diagnostic equipment in history. Good. The bad part of this is that it's horrendously expensive to develop and the market for this equipment is highly specialized and thus very small; there won't be much cost reduction by mass production. At the same time, the minute the term "medicine" or "science" is attached to a product, its price seems suddenly to skyrocket. If I can purchase a tool outside the lab equipment provider system I do, and usually at 1/3 the cost -- for the same item! Other items, though, like syringes, can't be so purchased.
The obscene profits garnered by the health insurance companies are another item that should be evaluated. If health insurance were publicly run then those not-inconsiderable costs would disappear. That's pretty simplistic; other administrative costs endemic to government probably would eat up a part of that.
This is probably my longest post. Long enough to leave it for now.
It took me a while; wanted to get my thoughts in order enough to write a coherent answer.