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Do you really think the US healthcare market is a shining example of the Free Market Gone Wrong? The US health system is anything but free market, the government has its influence at every level. To start off with, let's pick on a topic often picked on here, patents: http://www.dklevine.com/papers/imbookfinal09.pdf After you've read that, let's note that I can't as a chemical manufacturer produce any drug I want at any quantity I want and sell it, and as a consumer I can't buy any drug I want even out-of-country, where in a free market I could do both these things. People die waiting for new drugs or procedures to go through the process, it's not uncommon for people to go out of country to a US-trained doctor to have the procedure/treatment because it's illegal in the US. Some free market we have.


People die because they cannot afford insurance. Some people will never be able to afford any insurance because the price they can pay will always be zero.

Thinking everything in life can be self-regulated by market forces is madness. What next, should we buy and sell the right to vote? The right to pray? Why not the right of property itself? Or the right to live?


Hold on, you didn't address my point. Do you really think the US system is an example of the free market naturally at work and at failure? Given that you've responded can I assume you read the linked PDF so that we have a broader base of shared context?

You seem to be putting words into my mouth; I may indeed believe that for a world where market forces are the only forces, that world is a better one than our current world, but I don't see how you would arrive at that from my above comment alone. There are plenty of people who see the obvious problems that for instance patents in the health industry cause yet don't want to remove all regulation or government influence in the industry. For my own views of the FDA specifically, I think it's important to have an agency whose word the public can trust that a particular drug or whatever is "safe". But such an agency doesn't have to be public, and in any case its power should closer resemble the ESRB's power rather than the FDA's current power (which unless I missed something over the past decade has included the power to arrest anyone at gunpoint who tries to sell an orange on the premise that it prevents a disease like scurvy).

Since you did ask it, this rhetorical question does have an interesting answer you're probably not aware of:

> What next, should we buy and sell the right to vote?

This seems to be working pretty well for corporations. Extrapolated to a government leads to neocameralism: http://distributedrepublic.net/archives/2008/12/18/rampant-m...




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