Free markets don't solve every problem. There is such a thing as the price of anarchy. I agree that Crony capitalism is bad too, but free markets aren't the onl

Free markets don't solve every problem. There is such a thing as the price of anarchy. I agree that Crony capitalism is bad too, but free markets aren't the only way to introduce accountability into a system. The problem with healthcare is the large number of inherent perverse incentives. For example, if you don't regulate the quality of healthcare, then it is quite easy to make money selling bad quality services. Many people are gullible and some die needlessly from being sold "cures" that do nothing. People with cancer are a great target, because the real treatments are so unpleasant. Medical research requires a lot of expensive equipment. You could have a lot of government funding research - but academia has its problems. Academic research isn't always very focused and efficient, it doesn't always bridge the gap between theoretical and practical. Otherwise you have to provide incentives, which usually means patents. However, if you have patents on new drugs, then that grants a de facto monopoly on that treatment. The drug company that is the sole supplier of the medication that can save your life has an unsettling amount of market power. How do you solve this problem? Do you think in a truly free market, groups of people who were sick would band together and fund research into their cure? That would be a very slow process. The capital to find a cure should raised as quickly as possible to save as many lives as possible. To do that, you have to have expected future returns from people who aren't sick yet. Regarding the question of who gets to open hospitals and operating rooms - I can easily believe there is crony capitalism going on. However, this is something that should be regulated and controlled. Having hospitals open and close like regular businesses is not a good thing. If a restaurant is poorly managed, customers realise it from the quality of the food and the business fails because they lose customers. If a hospital is poorly managed, people can die. The negative market pressures in healthcare involve actual human suffering and death. It's not going to be much comfort if your dying act is posting a poor review of a hospital that lost your paperwork, misdiagnosed you or did the wrong surgery.