Free markets do a really good job of allocating resources most of the time. People are generally very good about making decisions about what clothes to buy, wha

Free markets do a really good job of allocating resources most of the time. People are generally very good about making decisions about what clothes to buy, what food to eat, what house to live in, etc. There are some exceptions there, but its easy to design market incentives to guide them to better choices. Heath care really doesn’t work with free markets though. People just aren’t able to make good decisions when it comes to health care, and profit focused business are able to exploit that, which results in horrible outcomes. It’s not hard for a lay person to assess the advantages and disadvantages of different cell phones sold from different retailers and from different providers, but how can people assess the pros and cons of different cancer treatments from different doctors at different hospitals? The complexity of biology and medical treatment is much much greater than anything people have to deal with in their normal lives. Decisions are almost impossible to make. Also consider that allocated resources based on a price/demand relationship doesn’t really work. Right now, health care companies focus on developing treatments for conditions that mostly afflict the rich, rather than treatments that could help the most people. It would not be hard for a medical board to make decisions about where research and treatment priorities are. We have lots of good data on how people are getting sick and how they get better. Lastly, if you get sick for no fault of your own, whose burden should that be? That burden should be spread across society as a whole.