This is a perfect example of why libertarians are chuckleheads. If we just “unleash the free market” on health care, prices would plummet!

A few things.

1. But would people actually get health care?
2. Who is going to make sure that the preconditions for a free market are met? https://twitter.com/LawyerJailhouse/status/1315321736083062784

Free markets don’t just *happen* in a vacuum. And “free market” doesn’t just mean “no government regulation.”

You need, among other things:
* perfect information
* easy entry and exit into the market
* low transaction costs

So how do we get from where we are in the health care market—where you have literally no idea what a procedure will cost or if someone attending your procedure is in your network—to a free market?

Who is providing this perfect information about how a drug or a procedure functions for a certain use?

How do you prevent price gouging for emergent conditions where choice is sharply limited by exigency?

A lot of the things that government does—things like FDA oversight—exist because we are trying to make the market function *better*.

(Some of the things are a function of regulatory capture.)

In the absence of a government, who is going to actually tell us if drugs work, and what circumstances they work under? Do you have a patent administration? Who makes sure that generic drugs made after expiration of a patent are sufficiently identical to the patented drug?

You can wave a flag saying “free markets for all!”

But how do you get to a free market? It’s not a given!

I do not subscribe to free markets as a religion. I think that markets are a valuable tool that often does a great job of correctly distributing resources.

I think that the lack of money that many people have distorts the resource-distribution capability of markets, because demand may exceed the current supply, but we’ve artificially thwarted people’s ability to signal demand by reducing their income.

I think markets would do a better job, in the fields where they do a good job of districting resources, if we had a higher minimum wage.

And I think there are some fields—such as health care—where the information disparity and the exigency means that the profit motive will always inherently end up being exploitative. I think we’ve had *decades* of proof that this is the case.

That’s why I support single payer.

I also think that ”private property” isn’t a god-given concept in the way that individual liberty is, but a function of societal choice, and that different societies may need to make different choices.

That’s why I support things like environmental regulations and hefty wealth taxes.

But “free markets! yeah!” is not a cogent political philosophy.

It’s a religion.