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Serious question: how is the American health care system more libertarian than in other developed countries?

• jfengel 6y ago
  You have your choice of health care providers and health insurers. Nothing changed about that under the Affordable Care Act; it excluded some low-quality insurances and established a government exchange for locating insurers, but you still pick the one you want (or opt out). You can shop around for doctors and hospitals to your heart's content, especially if you want to pay for it out of pocket. You can even haggle on the price. Many other countries have a single government health system that everybody belongs to. When the UK PM got COVID, he went to exactly the same health care system everybody else did. Others, like Germany, have private insurers, but the government limits prices. And the taxpayer-funded public health care system covers 90% of people. In the US it varies a lot state to state. The federal government has relatively little say in it (and had even less before the ACA and HIPAA). It's dominated by some very large corporations which fight fiercely with each other.
  • sixQuarks 6y ago
    I don't see this as libertarian at all. OK, so you have your choice of several highly regulated companies that are part of a system that is highly monopolistic in almost every way. Have you actually ever tried to haggle price? Forget haggling, it's almost impossible to even get a price upfront in the first place. If you don't believe me, call a few doctors and ask them what you will pay exactly for a specified procedure. I travelled to southeast asia once and forgot my prescription glasses. I literally walked into an eyeglass store, got a free prescription, and brand new pair of glasses for $10. If healthcare was a truly free market system, almost everyone would be able to afford it without insurance.