Hospital care is the largest spending category by far: https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpe

Hospital care is the largest spending category by far: https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/Downloads/highlights.pdf https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Sta... While the other things you list are technically not immediate life-or-death decisions, they still are not voluntary purchases. The presence of any kind of coercion distorts a free market. Also, I don't want to live in a society where individuals must decide between vaccinating their newborn children or paying their electricity bill that month. Or between getting a flu shot and buying groceries for the week. The externalities of these "individual" decisions are obvious, and a free market has no answer. Finally, let's imagine a system where emergency care is covered by a national single payer, but "humdrum things" are available in a free market. Now the poor can't afford basic physicals and flu shots, so we all end up paying more into the single payer system to cover such people being hospitalized for conditions that could have been prevented by regular medical checkups.