Healthcare is not a free market and yet Americans still try to pretend it's one. The information asymmetry is huge and nobody's going to negotiate/look around for anything when they think they're close to their deathbed.
Health care was a free market until the following events:
1. requirement for government licenses for doctors, which was done to drive Jewish and Black doctors out of business, and to restrict the supply of doctors
2. the advent of employer-provided health care during WW2, which due to tax policy married health care coverage to one's job
3. the 1962 FDA amendments which required efficacy for drug approval (not just safety) leading to a tripling of drug costs and a corresponding drop in new drug development
4. the introduction of Medicare/Medicaid in 1968
5. ever more regulation and interference in the market, like requirements the emergency rooms treat for free
Regardless of whether one thinks these are good things or not, they detract from health care being a free market.
Without government intervention , Amazon Basics would assuredly make dirt cheap versions of every major drug.
You can argue that this is bad for other reasons, but theres zero doubt that drugs would be cheap as water without government intervention (including IP protection and FDA mandated trials).
"Cheaper but people die due to lead poisoning" (replace "lead" with your favorite toxic chemical) does not count as cheaper, for medicine. It needs to be cheaper and trustworthy. The Iron Line of medicine, I guess.
Check out John Oliver and see how many problems we're having due to unregulated vitamins.
Also vitamins are used by a ton fewer people than medicine, and for purposes far, far less risky than medicine.
> Why do you feel so strongly this would happen in medicine?
Because it would happen for sure without regulation. Maybe not to the degree I pointed out, but if they wouldn't be forced to go through all those clinical trials, etc., I'm 99% sure that bean counters in a company would decide: "you know, maybe we could reduce the dosage of that super expensive ingredient by 10%, the side effects will only be known after 10 years and we're here only until we cash in our checks in 2 quarters".
> Do you really think companies (who spend a lot of capital building a business) will knowingly waste it all away by selling medicine that poisons people?
There are companies that periodically change their name to "cleanse" their image. Telecom companies, for example. Plus, they'd only have to persuade doctors, not regular people. Regular people don't really know who makes their specific medicine anyway (don't believe me, go ask your grandpa who makes each of his 10 drugs he's taking).
Really? Every supermarket has plenty of them for sale. The local drug store has whole aisles devoted to them. They don't stock items that don't move.
> Because it would happen for sure without regulation.
Poisoning people is not something allowed by the free market, any more than hitting people with a baseball bat is. Free markets require government to proscribe fraud and abusing peoples' rights.
> Regular people don't really know who makes their specific medicine anyway
They do when it turns out to be a problem, like the Tylenol murders.
After 1980 US really took off though. In 1980 US spend 8.2% of GDP, Germany 8.1%, Denmark 8.4%
By 1990 US was 11.2%, Germany and Denmark 8%
US plataued in 1993 about 12%, lasting until 2000 when it took off again, reaching 16% in 2009, then was mostly flat (slightly reducing) until 2013.
Also 1986 was the emergency room mandate, which used Medicare payments as leverage. And of course the obesity epidemic and the low-fat diet (blaming fat for heart disease) started around then. The ACA started in 2010 but phased in over four years.