President of Libery University supports concealed carry to "end those Muslims".

[Edi]

The reality remains, however, that the market still provides the most efficient outcome and net benefit, you are simply not interested in maximum efficiency or net benefit. Neither is the right, you just disagree on where the slider sits.

By what metric and where is your evidence for that? It's just an a priori claim and based on the ratio of expenditures per capita to the actual health care outcome quality, the US has the shittiest and least efficient health care system in the entire western world.

There's your "market efficiency".

[Patroklos]

You think the US has a market based healthcare system. How precious.

[The Romulan Republic]

Translation- Its not privatized and deregulated enough! It would work great if only we got rid of all the pesky regulation and health care for poor people!

[Patroklos]

If your goal is raw efficiency yes. I don't know anyone who has that goal.

[K. A. Pital]

You think the US has a market based healthcare system. How precious.

It is much more of a market than tightly regulated universal insurance systems. It was even more of a true market before Obamacare.

[Zaune]

But it's never going to be a 100% true market, because nobody is prepared to let people bleed to death outside the hospital because they can't provide payment up-front. I think even Donald Trump might draw the line at that.

[Grumman]

Translation- Its not privatized and deregulated enough! It would work great if only we got rid of all the pesky regulation and health care for poor people!

Translation: laws written during World War II that tied health insurance to your employer warp the market in unhealthy ways. If you have the choice of two health insurance providers, both should be tax-deductible, not just the one your employer sponsors as a fringe benefit. If two insurers offer the same service for the same price, one should not be arbitrarily made 50% more expensive than the other by making one tax-free and the other not tax-free. Doing so gives the employer-sponsored insurer a huge and unearned amount of leeway to screw with its clients before it becomes 50% worse than the competition to equal them being 50% more expensive.

[Hillary]

Didn't someone once get banned for continually claiming this in the face of all the evidence?

The argument over the supposed efficiency of the market in providing healthcare has surely been put to bed by now.

[Thanas]

The problem is that a true market economy would provide choice, but the US system is essentially cartels colluding with each other. Somebody who says that is not market-based would not necessarily be wrong, however the measures necessary to fix that problem would not result in a "true" market economy either.

[LaCroix]

The problem is that for life-essential goods or services, there can never be a "true" market economy, for the possibility to not chose any option and wait it out does not exist. Providers know that, thus healthcare is operating in a constant state of almost-usury. Only a tight state regulation can counter that.

[Adam Reynolds]

Translation- Its not privatized and deregulated enough! It would work great if only we got rid of all the pesky regulation and health care for poor people!

Well, it would indeed work, though not in the manner that people who buy insurance want. What would inevitably occur is that insurance companies would cancel or up the rates for people who suddenly have serious health problems, which would defeat the point of having health insurance. And people with preexisting conditions would just plain be SOL, at best they would pay absurdly high rates.

What it comes down to is that markets are crap when it comes to situations with asymmetries. This includes both monopolistic systems as well as asymmetric information, due to the fact insurance companies often have both. As was pointed out, this is made worse by the fact that insurance polices are often correlated with full time salaried employment as a benefit. This makes it worse for those with low income jobs as well as those who have to deal with

If your goal is raw efficiency yes. I don't know anyone who has that goal.

Few economists would argue that. Efficiency is only possible when the right conditions are in play. In reality they often aren't and it requires things like government regulation to make it possible.