[kasey_junk]

There are lots of reasons for competition to not exist in capitalist systems other than force. Things like high cost barriers to entry, monopolistic practices, or oligarchic systems all can lead to situations where competition will not bring down prices.

Most of the first world believes that health care is also a proper government function, because you disagree doesn't mean that the justice system is not an industry. Lots and lots of profit driven companies exist purely based on the justice system, just like lots and lots of profit driven companies exist to provide health care.

We've tried to have private emergency service providers. For most of the history of our continent basic services like fire fighting, property security & education were provided as free market enterprise. Early 19th century New York city has lots of examples of how very very bad the results from those practices can be.

As far as your empirical evidence for free market health services, I'd love to see it. By nearly every standard I've seen the best health care in the world is provided by governmental, or quasi-governmental heavily regulated single payer systems.

The fact that the US medical system is bad is neither an indictment of free market libertarian principles, nor leftist socialist ones, because the system we have currently is a mix of the worst aspects of all possible options. Like most other things, partisan rhetoric is neither correct nor helpful in sussing out the proper solution to complex problems.