I don't get how anyone. An draw conclusions from elective treatment like Lazik, when, until we get better about proactive medicine, most treatment is reactive and fairly dire.

I don't think in our current state of poor health and disfunction ("deferred maintenance") is a market appropriate at all. The Oregon experiment makes sense. We need to get a few good years of people taking care of themselves in ways they never did before. It might mean more visits. (A side benefit is we can recalibrate all our statics with more healthier people visiting.) Only then could we experiment with some quasi market tricks.

America is too stupid unhealthy and disfunctional for some clever market tricks to work. We need some simple stupid public healthcare and only then could try some German/Swiss/Japanese/Indianan tricks. Capitalism works best when the stakes are low, as a game for rich (or healthy in this case) people. The improvished or dying will just get screwed over without aggregate benefits for the rest.