vox.com/2014/4/5/5574270/republicans-stealthy-plan-to-cut-medicaid-explained

There's much in health-care policy that divides Republicans. But there's one major idea that unites them. Block grants for Medicaid. It's in Rep. Paul Ryan's budget. It was in Mitt Romney's presidential platform. It's at the core of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's new Obamacare replacement plan.
In its simplest form, turning Medicaid into a "block grant" simply means handing control of the program — and the funding for it — over to the states. But in all these plans the details reveal something else, too: a massive cut to Medicaid spending that could throw tens of millions of people off the program. To understand how that works, you need to understand the unusual way that Medicaid works...

Much of the difference between health care spending abroad and in the United States has to do with prices.
Americans don't actually go to the doctor a lot more than people in
other countries. But when we do, our medical care costs more. Specific
services, like MRIs and knee replacements, have significantly higher
price tags when delivered in the United States than elsewhere.