Yes, a free-market of healthcare is entirely possible, but a free-market (of any kind) must be subjugated to the right type of freedom first.
What Freedom?
Only a relativity theory of freedom can produce a dynamic meritocracy that continually balances the dynamic wants and needs of participants and suppliers of healthcare. Hence, the reason why we do not have properly functioning marketplaces for healthcare is that we have not even defined what freedom is, and lack the free-market principles those marketplaces must then be subjugated to. As a result, health care marketplaces, a buzzword all the rage, are not free-marketplaces at all, are macroeconomically flawed, and become a rebel without a cause.
We can fix all that by defining freedom as the relativity it is, providing a plethora of services just like freedom; to each his own. Based on that relativity, marketplaces must then comply with a minimum of eight foundational principles (I have laid out) to secure its dynamic and renewable behavior.
Irresponsible
I hasten to preface that the problem with healthcare is not just the provisioning of healthcare services in a marketplace, but an unsustainable attitudinal one induced by our endless consumerism, and the apathy to our responsibility of the state of our individual health.
You see, we in the U.S. are the second most obese country in the world. And no health care system can indeed make up for the lack of personal responsibility to live a healthy lifestyle and avoid becoming part of that system, to begin with.
70% of Americans are on prescription drugs, the majority of whom the outcome of easy – yet compounding – anthropogenic cascade induced by our own laziness and apathy. As a result, we now spend 17% of GDP on healthcare, to the tune of $329B/year. Our use of antidepressants is the worst in the world.
Own your Health
The state of your health, for most people, is and remains in your own hands, by avoiding the safety-net of a healthcare system. The reliance on such a system is for many (not all) nothing more than a deferral of our own responsibility, comfortably tossed into the lap of responsibility of the government.
A healthcare system can work well when it is not overloaded by people who in endless bouts of consumerism order super-sized drinks from, say, Starbucks every day and expect everyone else to share the burden of the devastating and literally ballooning consequences of such overwhelming caloric intake your body is simply not equipped to handle.
Merit-Based
So, for a health care system to work well, it must establish a meritocracy that places the responsibility for health care back to where it belongs, with the people. And once implemented, the outliers of unfortunate circumstances requiring care must be met with a marketplace aimed to serve that risk best.
