The ideal system of healthcare would be free market capitalism approach

Valid arguments were presented by both sides. The core of the difference of opinion reaches beyond health care. The major disagreement is in how much government intervention in economy and in major social affairs as healthcare we need. On one side, it is a conviction that the free market can better resolve our problems than even best crafted government regulations can. This is the position of Cameron L. Williams. The strongest opposing arguments are by Fred V. Carstensen, who brings historic argument that government licensing and other regulations arrive out of necessity to address problems not resolved by the free market.
I decide to resolve this challenge as true, agreeing with the challenger, Fred V. Cameron. The main reason for this decision is that opposite side did not present sufficient opposing arguments to the claim made by Fred V. Cameron, and supported by Ron F. White, as well as by Jazmin Cortes that the free market lowers the prices and improves quality, and thus gives more people access to affordable health care.
This challenge is about one of the major disagreements among Americans. It would be unreasonable to expect that we can have it resolved in one short debate. I encourage everyone seeing shortcomings of the arguments presented here, or disagreeing with my decision, to post a new challenge addressing the same problem. Sometimes rephrasing, or narrowing the subject, can help a challenge to win.

Because of the way this conversation works, I can not build off of comments others have made. For example, a very important point emerges in another comment: the issue of professional expertise. The author seems to think that malpractice suits as well as insurance--which was not put on the table as part of this discussion--can control this. But of course those very points involve government--because we have define in law what constitutes malpractice and what evidence must come forward to support such a conclusion, and I assume the author understands that insurance companies are typically regulated/audited because they sell something that they don't actually have to deliver. There is a long history of insurance companies both refusing to pay claims or just absconding with the accumulated premiums.

We began adopting professional licensure laws in the late 1800s precisely because as a society we recognized that consumers could not assess the professional qualifications of doctors, lawyers, engineers, architects, etc. [We have gone overboard on professional licensure: in some states more than a quarter of all jobs require state licensing. It is very attractive as a device for limiting competition and thus raising prices/incomes.] And especially in the case of medicine where malpractice left you dead, a suit was hardly a remedy.

So the reality is that the market for health care services inherently involves the government (as in fact do all markets because of the need to define property rights, contract, procedure, tort, etc); the only question on the table is the nature and extent of government involvement. The proposal here is for a limited role, leaving individuals/households to make their own choices in purchasing services. It does not contemplate (as my previous comment made clear) the role of insurance. And as the author's response to my first comment showed, the response was cast in terms of whether the cost of an airline ticket was excessive relative to the importance of attending to a dying relative--it ignores the question of the scale of medical costs that relative was incurring and their capacity to make a decision about that care.

The consensus literally in every other country in the world is that provision of health care can not, in general, be left to open competitive markets; it doesn't work. And that is why, from Bismarck"s introduction of universal health care almost 150 years ago, every other country in the world has adopted (in principle if not fully in fact) universal health care. Only America is a holdout, where medical costs are absurdly high and market incentives in large measure perverse. Both history and logic argue strongly against reliance exclusively on market mechanisms in the case of healthcare.

I think the way this is framed makes it impossible to discuss coherently. It focuses on buying health care services discreetly as if we are filling our shopping cart in the grocery store while ignoring the role of insurance. But precisely because the cost of health care services is often very high relative to income and savings, because the need for them is unpredictable, and because the length of time needed for such services is indeterminate ex ante, there is a strong preference for purchasing insurance if it is affordable. Prior to the ACA, the single largest driver of personal bankruptcy was uncovered medical costs; as a society we were facing rapidly growing costs for uncompensated care, and overall the total cost of healthcare was eating the American economy alive--17.4% of GDP.. If the question is reframed as whether we ought to have some form of universal insurance as the most efficient and effective way to providing access to healthcare, in recognition of the healthcare cost and access crisis we had pre-ACA, then we have a rather different discussion.

In the absence of insurance (or inadequate insurance), and in the absence of the 1985 Reagan Rule requiring hospitals to provide care regardless of the ability to pay, people literally died. Only some hospitals provided emergency care for anyone regardless (we used to have "charity" hospitals for the uninsured); increasingly hospitals were refusing to take those who did not have sufficient insurance or private money, insisting they be taken to another hospital. Precisely because people were dying as a result, Congress enacted and Reagan both supported and signed the new mandate.

What the statement above simply ignores are the historical dynamics involved here and the role of insurance since the introduction of employer-based insurance during WWII. If the system were as the author suggests--an open, competitive market for the provision of health care services--it is absolutely clear from historical experience that many people would die unnecessarily and prematurely. As a society, we decided that was unacceptable.

Everything else for which we enjoy higher quality, lower prices, and the freedom to choose is free market based. Therefore, if we want the same for our health care then we need to take a free market capitalism approach.

You pick one of the few instances where market competition can work in provision of a health service: laser eye surgery. For markets to work, as Milton Friedman noted, you have to have "informed, non-coercive" choices. In a few cases you can meet those standards--where the procedure is discretionary, there is good information about providers, and there is adequate time for investigation, assessment, and decision-making. But many health services don't meet either standard. Unless you have had serious medical training, you may simply be unable to understand either the nature of the disease or the appropriate therapies. That is a principal reason, in fact, that we require doctors to be licensed and to have clearly defined specialties. And in many cases the need is not discretionary: having been run over by an eighteen wheeler, you are in no condition to google for the best provider or negotiate the treatment.

Is your approach to people that cannot afford free market health care simply to say that they should go die. Because I think that's the problem we are trying to solve. The Haves think the Havenots should just go die because it is the Havenots' own fault that the cannot afford. Under an obvious system of institutionalized oppression for many specific groups, the denial of healthcare to those groups further oppresses them and keeps them from growing out of there desparation.

It's practically calling for an uprising or revolution, becaue what is the reponse to people that receive the threat - "go die"? It's "go die yourself"/"kill the rich".

So you don't think that there should be any government regulations to protect people from malpractice? Let the courts decide after the fact on each case of harm? I think that would invite a lot of harm.

Cameroon, thank you for opening this provoking challenge. Let us hear opinions for and against it.