We don’t have anything like a free market in medical care
in the USA. The AMA has kept things as close to monopoly
as they could. Plus there are lots of socialist gadgets
attached that tend to drive up prices (doctors and patients
more or less conspire together to maximize the bills when the
government or insurance is paying).
You can get very good, inexpensive health care from what
free market medicine is available, but you have to be
an intelligent consumer. If consumers are stupid, don’t expect
free markets to give good products and services at low prices.
Consumers have the responsibility to exercise their right of
choice, choosing the best the market makes available, if they
hope to drive poor quality and high prices out of the marketplace.
Socialism means "protect the stupid, so they can safely become
even more stupid", in effect. It has to break down eventually,
so why wait until catastrophe strikes to reform? Eventually the
ignorant masses will become unmanageable by sheer weight of numbers,
if you keep feeding them at the expense of the productive. Then
comes chaos and revolution.
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"A general must prove himself to be an arch-plotter, a cheat,
a thief, and a robber, so that he may overreach his opponent
at every turn …" — Xenophon
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