@ucbalumnus :
Well said, it is a fundamental problem with health care in general, should something so critical be allowed to shift in the winds of the free market, either wholly or in part? It is much like health insurance, there are those who promote the idea of competing health insurance companies, but the reality is the barrier to entry to starting in health insurance is huge, there is no such thing as mom and pop health insurance, the needed capital reserves are huge. Likewise, unlike let’s say tv sets, there is no economy of scale to the insurance side of it, that would allow cheap, full service health insurance (on the treatment side that is a different story). When you have something critical like medicine, the free market model is not a very efficient answer because it really isn’t a free market, the barriers to competition as you point out are too high.