Furthermore, even the capitalistic idealism of "multiple private insurance companies competing with each other will drive prices down" doesn't work. At the end of the day, Medicare decides what it's going to pay for a procedure, and the rest of the insurance companies base their compensation off that. The government is still in control of pricing, by and large.

Even the Singapore model (which looks capitalistic on the consumer end) relies on huge amounts of government price-fixing on the hospital side of things.