There Is Never a 'Free Market' in Health Care

I find the logic presented in this article to be ridiculous.

If markets for healthcare can't exist, why is medical tourism a thing?

But enough about that, let's proceed.

Yes, if you just got hit by a bus you have no ability to comparison shop for ambulance services, but you also have no ability to do literally anything.

Outside of the comparatively rare emergency situation where somebody is bleeding out and going to die literally right there without treatment, there's always an opportunity to reasonably comparison shop for medical services even if you're sick.

I don't believe that the insurance system advocated in this article is a panacea. Because of the crazy insurance system that exists, simply getting the actual prices of procedures is nearly impossible. It's easy to comparison shop for a phone or a toaster because stores advertise prices. But it's difficult for even trained professionals to figure out the ballpark prices even for the most common procedures because of the crazy insurance system.

There are many articles like this where people call healthcare providers and try and determine pricing of even common procedures like child birth and get the complete runaround.

https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/08/what-does-birth-co...