The authors point is, free-market or not, the system doesn't produce the same results when compared with many other systems, which are accused of being less fre

The authors point is, free-market or not, the system doesn't produce the same results when compared with many other systems, which are accused of being less free-market. If people accuse other systems of being less free-market, and those systems are actually more free market, it simply shows that the accusers are either idiots or lying or both. It does not prove that a free-market is a bad idea. Nor is there some linear continuum between socialism and free markets. Imagine you have two financial systems, one a complete free market, the other covered in a web of regulations. The free market one might be considerably better. But let's then say that one single regulation gets introduced: "Banks that fail get bailed out". With that single regulation, the system is now infinitely bad, much worse than the highly regulated system. What matters most is the particular details of a system, along with its implementation and its management. The real reason that the U.S. system so bad is that our political system is so completely dysfunctional. I could describe a half-dozen plans that on paper would be perfectly acceptable to you and lionhearted, to conservatives and liberals. But none of these plans will happen. Neither will the liberals' dream, European-like plan happen. The actually plan winding its way through Congress is a continuation of the same problems. By funneling more money away from the American people into the pockets of the various factional interests in the healthcare industry, it will most likely make things much worse.