You're quite correct about them raising their prices, but then again, healthcare is competitively purchased only the loosest and least meaningful way. There rea

You're quite correct about them raising their prices, but then again, healthcare is competitively purchased only the loosest and least meaningful way. There really aren't strong competitive forces emanating from the demand side - it's more like a demand-side oligopoly of buyers setting prices. In healthcare, we are arguably seeing the expected outcome of a lack of meaningful price competition. The government could take action to enable competitive individual purchasing of care instead of monopsony or group buying. It could provide cash incentives for people who shop around for basic, easy-to-understand care. It could fund patient education for more complex care. And if this model proves successful, it could be expanded to harder-to-understand care gradually and with caution to see how consumers react. In other words, competition can only work if it's allowed to. Today, food prices are raised for various reasons, but I am not aware of a school of economics that faults this on a demand-side government-funded competitive individual purchasing program (not that you said that either).