This is idealistic at best, but more accurately described as deliberately reckless. This is basically the textbook case of market failure; when a person's life is on the line there is not much room for rational comparison of alternatives nor time for competitive selection of services. There is always a time- or geographic- or panic- based distortion of a patient's decision.
But....As the guy above me defined it, the consumer would have a choice between UHC and private healthcare, in which case he IS choosing one over the other. Whichever one he chooses will be intimately involved in a life or death situation. So explain to me how that's different than what you're saying?
More to the point, we already have had a largely free market in which the current problems developed. Unless you want to regulate some barrier to insurance companies, rational consumers will always seek to buy insurance based on asymmetric information (and impose their unique risk profile on a larger pool of insurance consumers). So not only does a completely free market not fix our current problems, it ends up causing them in the first place.
No, we do not have a largely free market, we have the illusion of one. This debate tires me really. One side says that the free market caused the problems in the first place. The other side says it too oversight.. My idea for free market healthcare assumes we get rid of 3rd party interruptions (insurance companies).
I strongly believe that basic healthcare is a good which has to be provided by the government in order to achieve any kind of equitable treatment of different demographic groups.
And when you can find evidence of such a thing existing successfully for 300 million people, let me know.
For example, Hospitals which charge $50 for a saline drip do so on the assumption that an insurance company is covering the bill. However, the hospital can not really consult with the patient about every health-care decision; patients are by definition either unable or unfit to evaluate their own care. So the decision to push fluids (at whatever price) is not one that can be optimized by rational agents operating in a market! Even fully rational consumers will fail to judge reliably between transactions which are beneficial to them and those which are unnecessary
Maybe it's late but you've lost me. First, ive recently learned that for whatever reason, my brain cannot process "confuse A with B", or "confuse A for B" or "replace A for B" or "replace A with B". I CANNOT for the life of me move past this. At ANY point. But knowing what I know about system inefficiencies and market distortions, I assume you think I'm looking at inefficiency when I'm really looking at a market distortion. I don't understand your example here either (again, probably because it's late). What does a hospital charge have to do with consultation about necessary/unnecessary treatment? Regardless of the charge, the doctor tells me if something is necessary or optional, and then I look it up for myself so I can act as my own rational agent in conjunction with the doctor. So instead of paying $500 for an MRI, I could pay $75 because the hospital won't have to worry about insurance company fighting over 70% of the bill. Again, I don't see where you go from discussing hospital costs with or without 3rd parties, to the benefit of rational decisions.
So even if Hospitals were constrained to charge only prices that consumers are willing and able to pay, there is a clear and persistent market distortion in the sense that consumers of healthcare are axiomatically incapable of even approaching full information, let alone making rational decisions.
Give me an example of full information. I get wisdom teeth removed, my insurance covers a portion, with full anesthesia it costs let's say $1,000. Explain to me the necessity of rational information if the procedure foregoes the insurance companies and costs me $100. The difference between "necessary" and "optional" is still there, except that "optional" has become more appealing to me since the cost is significantly reduced. What am I missing?