
There Is Never a 'Free Market' in Health Care - wstrange
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisladd/2017/03/07/there-is-never-a-free-market-in-health-care/#1985187e1147
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throwaway420
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...](https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/08/what-does-birth-cost-hard-to-
tell/)

