How do you justify the claim that a free market wouldn't fix it? The free market is the most efficient method for setting prices for all goods and services. It's axiomatic and verifiably true.
Economic THEORY states that in a PERFECT market, demand and supply will arrive at an equilibrium price.
There are myriad of circumstances that make markets IMPERFECT. Economists have a whole lists of imperfections that result in markets with NON-EQUILIBRIUM prices. Asymmetric information (buyer knows more than seller), captive buyers, monopoly power, gambler's ruin, and so on, and so on.
Many of these market imperfections exist in the health care market, and as a result, the resulting prices are far, far from optimum.
