I’d go as far as to say the healthcare market in America is the opposite of a free market. Everything about it is anti-free, from the information asymmetry, to lack of local choices, down to an inability to even assent to participate in the transaction (due to incapacitation etc.).
It’s hard to even call this a market, let alone a free market. According to the Wikipedia entry on markets, “the usage of the price mechanism to convey information is the defining feature of the market”. It’s notable that in The American healthcare market, the price of your treatment is usually discovered after you’ve agreed to purchase the treatment (or it’s been administered without your consent). In fact, often it’s impossible to figure out what you will pay until after the fact due to how complicated answering that question is.
And even if it were a free market it’s debatable we wouldn’t want to keep it that way. In a commodity free-market of peas for example, a mismatch of supply price and demand price means that some people will pay a suboptimal price for peas while others will be priced out of the market entirely, and they will have to go without peas.
In a healthcare market, when someone is priced out they go without healthcare, which means worse and more expensive outcomes down the line. The old adage about how an irrational market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent comes to mind — a healthcare system motivated to maximize profit will price you out of the market longer than you can stay alive.
It’s hard to even call this a market, let alone a free market. According to the Wikipedia entry on markets, “the usage of the price mechanism to convey information is the defining feature of the market”. It’s notable that in The American healthcare market, the price of your treatment is usually discovered after you’ve agreed to purchase the treatment (or it’s been administered without your consent). In fact, often it’s impossible to figure out what you will pay until after the fact due to how complicated answering that question is.
And even if it were a free market it’s debatable we wouldn’t want to keep it that way. In a commodity free-market of peas for example, a mismatch of supply price and demand price means that some people will pay a suboptimal price for peas while others will be priced out of the market entirely, and they will have to go without peas.
In a healthcare market, when someone is priced out they go without healthcare, which means worse and more expensive outcomes down the line. The old adage about how an irrational market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent comes to mind — a healthcare system motivated to maximize profit will price you out of the market longer than you can stay alive.