[adventured]

Except that's nowhere close to a no true Scotman context.

The US healthcare system is extremely far away from being a free market style system. Healthcare hardly even crosses state lines. It's absurdly regulated. It's about as regressive in terms of markets as it gets these days. Over half the US system is government healthcare now, either directly or indirectly; eg heavy subsidies, SSD, Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, VA, numerous other programs.

Part of the reason for the vast cost inflation, is that the system has gradually spread out to cover a lot more people over the last 30 years. 5% of people are half of the cost in the US system. In a market system, if you focus on covering the other far healthier 95%, the system is dramatically cheaper - that's how it worked in the 1970s-1990s, and US healthcare was radically less expensive. 50% of people in the system (in terms of cost) are only 3% of the total cost of all healthcare in the US, you can cover those people for extremely inexpensively in a free market system.

By changing the system as they have, such that you commingle government and quasi-private systems, you risk dramatically screwing up a private market system and the government system simultaneously. Ultimately you can do one or the other, you can't do both at the same time and in the same phone booth where they constantly collide. You get the worst aspects of both worlds, which is what the US now has.

[ska]

I think you missed the point I was attempting to make. So I’ll try again. Yes, the healthcare system is very distorted - but that is entirely common for the US.

The Scotsman here in particular is a truly free market.