Political Memes

If the insurance didn’t create the atmosphere of territorial turfing, prices would be naturally set by competition. They would be much more accessible.

Healthcare suffers from several very competition distorting Economic effects.

• The so called "expert advantage", which is the situation were the buyer doesn't have the expertise to judge the quality of the service the seller is offering.
• That buyers are willing to pay just about anything to survive, so unlike pretty much everything else the upper limit to prices is incredibly high (basically, everything a person has plus how much debt they can take in).
• As somebody else pointed out, healthcare service provision is geographically constrained for a lot of things, the more urgent the situation the worse it gets, so for example if you have an accident and your life is in danger, if there is only one Hospital in town that's were the ambulance will take you, so you literally have no choice.
• The cost and time to train medical professionals as well as of the equipment, means that for anything beyond simple clinics there is a high barrier to entry into that market.

Unlike the ideological pseudo-magical fantasy bullshit that some politicians spew about the Free Market in order to defend certain choices of theirs that benefit those who given them millionaire speech circuit fees and non-executive board memberships (namelly to justify privatising things that are in low competition or even natural monopoly markets), Free Market Theory only works for a few markets where there is a natural tendency for competition such as, say, teddy bears or soap, not for markets were there are multiple factors reducing choice and the ability of buyers to judge the quality of what they are buying before they buy it.