[dangerlibrary]

Both history and theory show that free markets do not allocate resources well when the basic assumptions underlying efficient markets don't hold.

In the presence of non-rational behavior - such the the type of decisions people tend to make when making what they believe to be life or death decisions with extremely imperfect (and asymmetric) information - markets do not efficiently allocate resources. Throw in the fact that the decisions are frequently framed in terms of probabilities and made under duress and you've got a whole mess of psychological problems as well, even if the economic assumptions did hold (they don't).

That doesn't speak to a need for centralized planning per se, but it does mean that markets won't do the job correctly on their own.