It seems like the health care system has been gamed in the USA so that health insurance companies and big pharmaceutical companies get a huge profit. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think this is the case anywhere in Western Europe/Canada or most other countries that have a functional health care.

The massive regulation and government interference in health care in the US has definitely resulted in companies gaming it for profit.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/09/how-ame...

https://www.amazon.com/Competition-Monopoly-Medical-Care-Fre...

https://www.amazon.com/Regulation-Pharmaceutical-Innovation-...

Health care costs are high in other western countries as well. They are just paid indirectly, from the much higher taxation level.

No, USA pays much more than any other developed country, see: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.TOTL.ZS?year_hig... (below graph is sortable table)

Is that really true? I was under the impression when people talk about the cost of healthcare they aren't talking about the cost of insurance. Unless you're saying the taxation somehow subsidizes healthcare in addition to providing insurance?

For example, medication is more expensive in the US right?

> Where it has failed to do so are in areas that are not free market, like health care.

Alternatively, the free market has failed to work in certain areas forcing the government to get involved to attempt to fix things. If the free market worked for health care, we'd be using it.

The free market, whatever that really means hasn't been involved in healthcare in the US since WW2.

Not disputed, so what? What point are you making? That we need to give the free market another try so it can fail again? Healthcare lacks basic price transparency, consumer choice, even the ability to know what you're buying before you need to buy it. The free market solution to something like healthcare is insurance, how's that worked out? It's not something that can work well in a free market.

I'm a capitalist, I believe capitalism is awesome, however capitalism doesn't work on everything, just most things. It's not a golden hammer that will solve all problems.

You stated that if the free market worked with healthcare, we'd be using it. But we don't know if it would improve the situation since it's been so long since the market was free in any sense.

Look at Lasik eye surgery for a counterpoint. Yes, this is regulated by requiring licensed practitioners, but it's not controlled by insurance companies, Medicare/Medicaid etc. The cost for this procedure has dropped dramatically, while the procedure itself has improved in the last decade.

> The US free market has been very successful at radically reducing the cost of goods and services

At the expense of generating poverty either in the form of people working two or three part time jobs (so that "costs" like healthcare can be avoided) to barely make rent or abroad, in factories where one needs to extend nets to prevent suicides.

The US has been the greatest bootstrapper of poor people into middle class and wealth history has ever seen. The US was populated by poor immigrants with little more than a suitcase. Wealthy people didn't immigrate to the US. Look at the statistics on height, longevity, and infant mortality from 1800 to today. It's a little hard to argue that the free market impoverished people.

As for healthcare, that has not been a free market in the US at least since WW2.

The linked PDF talks about how, 50+ years ago, President Lyndon Johnson declared an "unconditional war on poverty in America."

Yet as of the publication date, 31st December 2006, data indicate that more than 12 percent of U.S. residents still live below the poverty line.

For 2006, a family of four was considered in poverty if its annual income fell below $20,444. For a couple under age 65, the poverty threshold was $13,500, and for an individual living alone, it was $10,488.

For another example, West Germany turned to the free market from about 1948 to 1970, resulting in an incredible rise from the devastation of WW2. East Germany did not see any results remotely similar.

Before you say "The Marshall Plan" most of the MP money was given to France and Britain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan#Expenditures

Poverty is where we all started from. Free market is the one responsible of the reduction of poverty in most western countries.

To see the result of tightly controlled market, check out Venezuela and the old Easter European communist regimes.

In support of this, have you happened across Deirdre McCloskey, and her tomes Bourgeois Dignity and two books that follow.

She does a decent job of thrashing out, at length, why the dignity to participate in the free market by innovating and bringing those innovations to market is the thing that created the modern world. In her own words she gives a "full scale defence of capitalism."

The suicide rate at Foxconn was less than that of the general Chinese public. The people in poverty in America are well-off as measured by consumption rates.

Note that a social safety net is not inconsistent with free markets.