That brings up another point: What do the calculations of “percentage of GDP spent on health care” cover? If one system, like the US, has doctors paying high tuition at medical school, which is then passed on to consumers as higher health care costs, but another system has doctors’ tuition paid “for free” out of other tax money, do these comparisons count the subsidized doctor education as part of “health care costs?” Or is that slid into “these countries spend more on education and less on health care?” Similarly, if a country decides that it wants to research pharmaceuticals through government research instead of using the profit system, are the taxes used to pay that counted as “health care costs” or as “this country saves on health care costs so it can spend more on science and research?”

Maybe you could get some of your students to research it, like Lomborg got his students to examine some of Julian Simon’s claims he had doubts about.

Proper nutrition is the first medicine and food is much, much close to being free market, so if your views are correct they are likely to apply.

I had similar experiences, and James Donald had a similar experience.

My wife was advised to get a colonoscopy. We shopped around, got a reasonable price at a doctor with a good reputation, negotiated with the insurance company, did all the stuff one does in an environment which actually has prices. Then after the colonoscopy was done, the hospital pulled a huge list of stupendously expensive charges out of their ass, most of which were obviously ridiculous or completely made up out of thin air, just trying it on to see what they could get away with, and all of which were charges we had definitely not agreed to, nor consented to in any way, formal or informal, written or unwritten. They just were not used to doing stuff on the basis that one has a definite price, and that the price one charges affects demand for one’s services. The concept seemed alien and incomprehensible to them. Mentally, they were socialists.