The current American system is heavily regulated and nowhere close to a free market. > Thus in an unregulated market, medical practitioners can very nearly cha

The current American system is heavily regulated and nowhere close to a free market. > Thus in an unregulated market, medical practitioners can very nearly charge whatever a patient is capable of paying, and in my experience that’s exactly what they do. Emergency situations are exactly what insurance is for. Free market advocates don't expect patients to shop around in that kind of situation, but they do expect them to shop around for insurance, general practitioners, specialists for non-emergency treatments, etc. Right now, none of those things are realistic for the vast majority of Americans because the government has incentivized and now mandates employers to provide comprehensive insurance, which introduces a layer of opacity between consumers and prices. You make some okay suggestions but even more can be done without resorting to mandates: 1. Remove the requirements and incentives for employer-provided insurance, introduce a program for transitioning employer insurance into private individual/family coverage. 2. Reduce or eliminate medical patents. You suggest price controls, which are a bad idea, commonly leading to shortages. Pharmas can't charge such outrageous prices when faced with competition. 3. Reduce or eliminate minimum coverage requirements, introducing a new type of medical plan that covers only catastrophic unpreventable emergencies. 4. Reduce the onerous nature of the FDA to a level on par with such agencies in other countries. Make it cheaper to develop drugs. The FDA should have two branches: safety and efficacy, with separate certifications. A drug can be released whenever it is safe, but they can't directly advertise until it's proven effective.