Isn’t this just a no true Scotsman? The US claims at least to have built a free market solution, and if nobody else has been able to make it work at scale, why isn’t that enough.
I don’t think so, although that seems like a fair question of you to ask.
I’ve tried on numerous occasions to get pricing quotes for healthcare both paying fully out of pocket, and for getting an estimate for what I’ll be left covering after insurance negotiates ads pays their part.
In every attempt I get absolutely nowhere price estimate-wise and wind get this or that procedure done just hoping and praying that the ultimate bill will be remotely reasonable
We’re so far off the mark for having a healthy marketplace for healthcare pricing that I just can’t see considering it dysfunctional to itself be an appeal to some purity.
Perhaps one might argue that a formerly functional healthcare pricing system will inevitably degenerate into this robber Baron situation that we’ve got currently, but otherwise I don’t see the no true Scotsman.
> The US claims at least to have built a free market solution
I don't know that "the US" has actually claimed this, but in any case any such claim is false. There are lots of reasons for that, but the key one is simple: the people getting care, patients, don't know how much it costs. You can't have a free market if the person receiving a good or service doesn't know the cost of what they're getting, and so can't judge whether what they're getting is worth what it costs.