[IAmEveryone]

Your argument is circular: You are assuming a "free-market system" to be better than the US health care system. Then, you use this assumption to "prove" that US health care is suboptimal. Which in turn you're using to argue for a "free market" system.

They are making an empirical argument that pricing in the US is not actually out of line when compared to the correct base. This would imply that the US system is about as efficient as all others. And considering the differences between vastly different systems are almost negligible, it is also an argument that these systems are rather efficient. Because if there were easy wins with any specific measures, you would expect some systems to improve relative to others with skill or just luck.