People talk and wrote as if the IS insurance cartel system is a product of "the free market." Far from it. What we have here is the result of a century of medical lobbying for special government provileges, tax codes, and political intervention.
Governments need to appear legitimate to gain at least grudging acceptance from the public, and services like education and healthcare can easily be made to appear like essential government programs. However, the result is always mediocre at best, and often completely broken. Canadians are often medical tourists to border states because American expense is preferable to long waits. further, if people pay in cash, the prices are far less than the ones we see from the insurance industry stories.
There is even a small but growing trend of clinics offering services with open prices and internal pharmacists using very small markups showing how much more affordable medicine and surgery can be without the insurance cartels. It's not theory, it's demonstrable even now in the US.