[lunchTime42]

Its never free enough. And if it where, it was the customers fault. And if the customers behaved flawless and it would not work. There would be traitors, sabbotaging a perfect system. In a closed worldview critque acceptance is not even possible anymore. Anything brought up is not evaluated but instantly deflected. There is no - "Lets measure this" and compare (Lets call it the free market approach to ideas ;) just offense and defense. Thanks for proving the Pa-OP right.

[AnthonyMouse]

When you define "free market" as "absence of government regulation" then you can get whatever result you want, because you can build something that looks like a government inside it, not call it a government, and have it do the thing you need a government to do. And then if you get one of those things which is doing the bad things governments do, you do call it a government and it isn't a free market anymore.

The lesson from this is not "free markets are bad," it's "simplistic ideologies are useless."

We know that private actors are bad at some things, like funding basic research and building roads and utilities. We also know that governments are bad at some things, like making consumer products. So let the government build the roads and let GE make the washing machines.

The worst alternative is to have the government do half of something. This is the US healthcare system. Single payer has problems, but it works. The complete absence of government in healthcare would have different problems but would also work. What we have doesn't work. It's a corrupt mechanism for funneling public money into drug companies.

Here's the test for whether the government should do something: Does it make sense for the government to pay for this and then give it away for absolutely no money whatsoever to every citizen of the country? If not, the government shouldn't do it. Notice that the answer for healthcare is then not obvious, but the thing we have is not a valid answer.

[jerf]

The point is not that making health care more free market would necessarily improve it. The point is that using the US healthcare system to beat up on free markets is fallacious, because the US healthcare system is not a free market in the first place.

Cards on the table, I do think that more freedom in the market would be good for the entire system, from top to bottom. But I can find myself in total agreement with those who think it should be more socialized that what we have now is a really crazy, chaotic system that seems to manage to combine the worst of both worlds. As a result, it's every bit as valid to claim that socialized health care is a disaster because the US health care system proves that it doesn't work... which is to say, an entirely invalid and fallacious claim.