I said MOST free market. I never claimed it operated under ideal conditions. The fact is still though that most other health care systems in the west are considerably LESS market oriented than the US.

A more free market oriented approach than today would just make the US system even worse. Health care is not a natural market. There is too much information asymetry, and wrong incentives at play.

As for standards, you seem to have a rather naive idea of how government makes standards. Usually it will heavily involve industry. It is not like government just dreams up arbitrary shit.

As for example of lack of standards. I remember when living in the US having to deal with 4 different incompatible cell phone standards. I remeber arguing with an American on how it was better to standarize on GSM. He made your point that the market would eventually produce a much better standard than GSM. Except by the time the US market got anywhere we were already moving over to 3G. Sorting stuff out in the market is often simply way too time consuming when technology moves at the current pace.

Anything with banking and finance in the US seems to sorely lacking standards. But I am sure things must have improved since I lived there 15 years ago. Then there was no standard for electronic bills, sending payment to other bank accounts electronically, simple stuff like the formatting/layout of a paper bill.