> Over time, industry participants will continue to expand rent seeking practices and because the demand for health is almost perfectly inelastic, they can cont

> Over time, industry participants will continue to expand rent seeking practices and because the demand for health is almost perfectly inelastic, they can continue to get away with it. > I'm a rabid defender of the free market, but healthcare is not a regular market because nobody chooses to purchase healthcare services. You take them at whatever price they are offered whenever you need them. It's why we call users of these services "patients", not "consumers". Part of your answer is based on the idea that demand for healthcare is "almost perfectly" inelastic. Do you have any evidence that this is true? I'm fairly certain this is just not true, at all. People given free ability to consume more healthcare will absolutely consume more of it, doing extra tests that might not be necessary, visiting the doctor for things that otherwise they wouldn't. Even more than that, if you have a terrible toothache at 2am, would you wait til morning or pay extra to visit a 24-hour dentist, if one exists? Different people will answer this differently, and I assume price factors into this quite a bit. Which services are available 24/7 is very elastic, how fast services are available is elastic, etc. In fact, one possible answer to "Why are Americans paying so much more for healthcare" is because Americans are richer, and are paying more for everything.