[maxharris]

Unfettered

Are you for real? Nearly every aspect of medicine in America is regulated: from the number of people entering training to become new doctors, to whether a procedure will be reimbursed and at what rate, to what devices and drugs will be permitted for sale, to whether or not physicians are allowed to unionize, or discuss what their procedures cost (they are not in either case).

Whatever your ideology is, it doesn't change the fact that the health care is one of the most heavily regulated industries in our economy.

[foolrush]

Unfettered in the capitalist sense and over-arching system, not necessarily administration thereof. Also remember that it is precisely unfettered capitalism that leads to layers of said administration, seeking profit at every turn.

Turning over a few rocks and we can quickly see that the cost of administration of medicine, including devices, pharmaceuticals, etc. is also wound up in this dance of maximal profit at all cost. This doesn't even begin to examine the cultural role capitalism has played in the legislation the enshrines the administrative layers to preserve profits for the corporate entities.

The last concern under such a system is the person and their health, or the ethical-societal implications, because such a model provides no such metric.

[maxharris]

Capitalism unfettered by what?

Capitalism, in pure form, is a political system (this is not a typo - I did not mean to write "economic") in which a strong central government protects the individual rights of each of its citizens (mainly by going after people who murder, theft, fraud). A capitalist government does not regulate industry.

Despite what you say above, what we have today is not capitalism. In healthcare in the US today, it's 80% state control, 20% private (if not 90/10).

I'm not going to comment on the rest of what you've written because the above is a more fundamental point, and we clearly don't agree on it.