The point is that when you need food, you can go to any number of places to get it. So going to any one specific place is not a requirement.
Compare that to healthcare. I get in an accident or call an ambulance. I don't get a choice where I go or who I see. I just go to wherever is nearest or has availability and hope that it's either not bad enough to justify me needing to go somewhere else or that I have the ability to be transferred to the location of my choice (at great cost).
A more mild example are diseases like cancer. You'll have some more freedom on which place you go to but oncology is extremely diverse and specialised. Unless you get really lucky, odds are there's only a specific handful of doctors within a several hours drive of you that actually have a good idea of how to treat your specific cancer under the specific conditions you have it. So you go to whichever one of them can see you in a reasonable amount of time because otherwise you die. The same goes for many of the complex diseases people spend months or years diagnosing because they are so hard to pin down.
And that's discussing situations where time is of the essence and you get very little choice in your options. And those tend to be the most expensive.
There's plenty of other aspects of healthcare that are far cheaper of course and could be likened to the grocery store examples but drawing the regulatory line between the two is near impossible given the fuzzy nature of healthcare and medical science.
The point is that when you need food, you can go to any number of places to get it. So going to any one specific place is not a requirement.
Compare that to healthcare. I get in an accident or call an ambulance. I don't get a choice where I go or who I see. I just go to wherever is nearest or has availability and hope that it's either not bad enough to justify me needing to go somewhere else or that I have the ability to be transferred to the location of my choice (at great cost).
A more mild example are diseases like cancer. You'll have some more freedom on which place you go to but oncology is extremely diverse and specialised. Unless you get really lucky, odds are there's only a specific handful of doctors within a several hours drive of you that actually have a good idea of how to treat your specific cancer under the specific conditions you have it. So you go to whichever one of them can see you in a reasonable amount of time because otherwise you die. The same goes for many of the complex diseases people spend months or years diagnosing because they are so hard to pin down.
And that's discussing situations where time is of the essence and you get very little choice in your options. And those tend to be the most expensive.
There's plenty of other aspects of healthcare that are far cheaper of course and could be likened to the grocery store examples but drawing the regulatory line between the two is near impossible given the fuzzy nature of healthcare and medical science.