The more regulations you have, the less market freedom you have, so it is either or. Of course it's on a spectrum, from total government control, to total market freedom, but that doesn't change the fact that these are mutually exclusive properties, that exist in inverse proportion of each other.
Supermarkets and the food supply chain are far less regulated than hospitals and the healthcare supply chain. That's why they've seen far greater gains in efficiency.
Claiming that "free" markets improve healthcare is just ignorant of the facts. These things are pretty much uncorrelated.
Many countries make regulated healthcare markets work. Many countries make non-market healthcare work. The quality of a country's healthcare system is predicted by 1. how much it spends 2. if it's the USA.
The evidence we have, of medical fields where market forces are more dominant, compared to medical fields where market forces are less prominent, suggests market forces reduce prices in medicine.
In the US, the increase in healthcare costs is directly the inverse of the percentage of the population covered by insurance. Insurance removes the market force of consumer price consciousness and bargain-hunting. Government regulations encourage the provision of healthcare through insurance. The increase in insurance coverage is an artificial outcome of government intervention.
>>Many countries make regulated healthcare markets work. Many countries make non-market healthcare work
No, they don't. The healthcare systems of all developed countries I've seen have severe problems. Case in point, Canada:
The problems with the US healthcare system originate in regulations. There was a 3,200 percent increase in the number of healthcare administrators between 1975 and 2010, compared to a 150 percent increase in physicians, due to an increasing number of regulations:
Our supermarkets have lots of regulation ranging from what food may contain, how it is produced, to how it may be markedet.