That's an interchangeable commodity service and the discussion was about commodity medication. A free market requires a meeting of equals and we have a journalism grad vs the combined minds of PHD chemists and MBAs... sounds fair and free. It also requires participants in the negotiations to not be under duress, like, say, death without medication. Obviously the UK market is free-er than the US market by a considerable amount.
This is false. The UK has a national health service and private provision running side by side. Any doctor is free to work outside the NHS to provide private practice.
I'm talking about the UK, that's why I put "nearly all healthcare delivered".
My argument is that calling the UK system more "free" when a very large percentage of all healthcare delivered is purchased by a single payer is inaccurate.
Umm...no. The UK is a single payer system, that is, the government holds a monopoly over healthcare purchasing (or nearly all healthcare delivered).
If a really skilled doctor wanted to charge a higher rate for their services, tough, he/she would get the same as every other doc.
It's not a "freer" system.