I haven't sent btc in a while. Back when i sent btc, fees were less than 50 cents. Maybe 3 dollars? I went and tried to send less than 30 dollars of btc... fees show up as 12 dollars on electrum and thats with the lowest possible fee where i make it send within 25 blocks.
Electrum's fee estimation algorithm --- like many other wallets --- tends to overestimate the required fees. When I send based on their fee slider at the 25-block setting, I've often had transactions confirmed within 1-3 blocks. For that reason, I usually manually set the fee lower based on
https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/ and replace-by-fee if needed.
Now if you want to send under 1 dollar, it cost 12 dollars. When is this issue getting fixed? Who in their right mind would send btc for small amounts when even the fee is that much? Its like paying 12 dollars for something you want to buy that is 1 dollar?
The base protocol isn't going to be "fixed." Fees are denominated in BTC, not dollars, so as the price of BTC rises, you can expect fees denominated in dollars to rise. Also, the capacity limit promotes rising fees over time to replace the block subsidy, which used to be 50 BTC. Now it's only 12.5 BTC and it will continue to drop exponentially. If fees don't rise, Bitcoin's security model comes under threat.
The Lightning Network will hopefully mitigate this and allow for micropayments. But I would guess we're 6-12 months away from LN adoption, if not more.