The counter to this argument is the following: - The U.S. is some sort of ungodly hybrid system, a muddling of free market and tightly regulated ideas, and has

The counter to this argument is the following: - The U.S. is some sort of ungodly hybrid system, a muddling of free market and tightly regulated ideas, and has very bad outcomes for the amount of money we spent. - Everyone else has gone away from a market system, more toward a regulated system, and experienced better outcomes. It's possible that also walking away from the other end of the market and relying on the invisible hand to administer your IV will work, but it's not a notion supported by much data - it's a free marketeer leap of faith, and it's in an industry where many of the assumptions needed for a free market (information symmetry comes to mind immediately) don't exist.