They are more flexible because they are less regulated. Restaurants don't have a certificate of need to stop competitors from showing up. You can buy food internationally and have it shipped in if you can't find it locally for a reasonable price, but try to do the same with medication and you'll have a bad time.

You can even look at less regulated medication, like pet meds, and see how much cheaper some are. We don't need to go that far, just like how people food is more regulated than pet food, but without being as regulated as our current market for healthcare.

They don't need to be as highly regulated as medicine needs to be. Even children can learn most of the important elements of food safety (cook to a certain temperature, don't cross contaminate utensils, wash your hands, etc.).

Much of medicine is vastly more complex than something like food safety or clothing safety.

> They are more flexible because they are less regulated

No, because when your tooth hurts now, or you're bleeding now, or you need to get vaccinated to avoid you getting hepatitis, there's very little choice in the matter.

Healthcare is a fundamentally inelastic good. A dangerous one too, because bad quality healthcare can literally kill people. Inaccessibility of healthcare kills people too.

Look, there is no need to reinvent the wheel here. The US can look into any other developed country on the planet for inspiration. Every single one of them has a better, more accessible, cheaper for everyone involved, usually more or at least differently regulated, with better outcomes, model.

> No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

There’s a lot to say about the structure of health care, but the classic “Now” lecture isn’t it. Most people make key decisions about provisioning and paying for their health insurance months before they actually need it, and likewise establish relationships with a primary care physician or dentist at a quite ordinary level of urgency.

The vaccines are also a particular bad example. (The typical Now-lecture example is of emergency room care).

The funny thing is in Australia, pet medication always generates sticker shock because it's a lot more expensive for the consumer then PBS subsidized pharmaceuticals.