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Not even CLOSE to a free market. In the 50s and 60s it was. At that time people only carried insurance for catastrophic issues, and paid cash for everything else. It kept costs down and quality climbing. Then a few things started happening. State governments started mandating certain care levels for every insurance carrier, pharma used lobbyests to get the regulations passed in order to control markets, lawyers started suing everyone that they could lay their hands on, etc, etc,
Now the government is SO involved with every aspect, the price is out of control. Having said that, the quality of care is truly amazing for the vast majority of people in the US. (I have dealt with health care systems personally in many places on the planet, including the EU). However, I believe that with the now massive increase in government intervention, you will see the pace of inovation slowing, the care levels going down, and wait times increasing, number of doctors going down, etc... Shit is about to go downhill big time IMHO.
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