Until we fix the collusion between the American Hospital Association[0] and insurance companies through the National Uniform Billing Committee[1] to opaquely set pricing, there will be no free market in the healthcare industry.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Hospital_Association
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Uniform_Billing_Commi...
Further, while the technology has advanced (eg cancer treatment for your dog), prices are much lower than what humans pay, and in some cases, declining.
Namely: - Inelasticity: economic terms, human healthcare is extremely inelastic, you'll spend everything you have to save your own life. Not so much with a pet. - Poor information: Because of so many middlemen, there is very little information for human healthcare, you rarely know how much something will cost before you owe it. - Non-Fungible: doctors are not a commodity that you can trade out like cereal. There are human relationships involved, that make it difficult to compare apples to apples.
These are all factors that human healthcare lacks that are generally necessary to make for an efficient market.
This is an open and shut issue if the only thing you're worried about is the end consumer. The gov't, on the other hand, needs to worry about the system including the insurance companies. Changing the rules so that a person can forgo health insurance until they are sick is a sure fire way to start a death spiral.
It wasn't until the law was changed to include the individual mandate was the pre-existing condition clause even viable. I'd argue the individual mandate is so weak, that we might end up with a death spiral anyways.
What's the popular saying on HN? "Don't tear down the fence until you know why it was put up in the first place."