[Nosewelder]

About the "free market" approach: Medical care has what in economics is known as "zero price elasticity". That means that people have zero ability to refuse the product if the price is too high. In economics, its associated with market failure, because low price elasticity means providers make more money by raising prices than by competing with each other.

Some subsets of the health care industry have price elasticity and seem to work fine in the free market, such as Lasik and liposuction etc. But stuff that gets called medically necessary don't work in a market, there is an entire branch of economics dedicated to it: Health Care Economics. Ironically pioneered by an American, Kenneth Arrow. Won him a Nobel Prize.