I do have a prior, which is that I don't think any "free" markets exist in western nations due to broad consumer laws, plus applicable domain specific laws but

I do have a prior, which is that I don't think any "free" markets exist in western nations due to broad consumer laws, plus applicable domain specific laws but interested in your perspective. There are severe limits on what any of us can buy and/or sell and how we talk about it. A good kick starter for discussion would be an example of a free market as you see it. If you are doing things with widespread societal impact generally society will have some things to say about that and their (perhaps slow and ham-fisted) means of expressing opinions about that is law and regulation. As a consequence of seeing all fields as essentially regulated, I have a pretty low bar for free markets which is mostly "multiple parties can meaningfully compete and politicians do not completely determine that. Also consumers have a genuine choice.". This excludes China but kind of includes the USA, in many fields. But health care is weird. As an example of my point of view, I think we can have laws that regulate carbon, material waste or other externalities and might be "onerous" but still have "free markets".