re: Supporters of Obamacare: Are there no free market solutions to Healthcare?

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Of course they would, because insurance companies wouldn't actually be paying any claims. Its really profitable to run an insurance company when all the money comes in and none rolls out.

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Then why did Blue Cross Blue Shield pay near a million dollars for my daughter to have open heart surgery in Boston? If your claim were true, they wouldn't have paid for it anywhere.

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Then why did Blue Cross Blue Shield pay near a million dollars for my daughter to have open heart surgery in Boston?

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Was there free market healthcare in Boston or something? I'm not getting the relevance.

Maybe you can explain why the same insurance company repeatedly denied my sisters claims for surgery for breaking a vertebrate, until threats of a lawsuit changed their mind?

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If your claim were true, they wouldn't have paid for it anywhere.

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You're mistaken. My claim only related to insurance in a "free" market, uninhibited by government. Unless the "Boston" you are referred to is on the Moon, I guarantee you the insurance you are referring to was not uninhibited by government.

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Supporters of Obamacare: Are there no free market solutions to Healthcare?

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Of course there are.
However as you know, what motivates "supporters of Obamacare" is often something other than altruism. In many (probably most cases) support is based on perceived personal interest, rather than what is good for the country or what is good in the long term.

As previously posted, there are many solutions.

E.g.

Tort Reform / Tort System Restructuring.
The US tort system is out of control. When we talk about legal cost estimates there are two components. (1) Direct Costs which include the total awards for malpractice, personal injury,etc. And (2) Indirect Costs which include unnecessary test, services, time, etc performed in an effort to mitigate potential liability (CYA). Direct tort costs to the US Healthcare system are 10X per capita of any other nation in the world. For example, direct legal costs relative to the Swedish system are something on the order of 100X lower than the US. However, indirect legal costs are 5-9X the direct costs and are virtually nonexistant in other countries. Attributable factors for the excess US legal costs include contingency based fee structuring, virtually no plaintiff risk, and jury pool manipulation. Moving to either a pay-go plaintiff charge, or a loser-pays system would dramatically reduce questionable suits.

Open Market Product Pricing.
Pharmaceutical, equipment, medical device, and supply pricing should be brought into line with pricing of identical products sold to other 1st world countries. It is obscene that US Pharmaceutical Manufacturers price their wholesale products 2 to 10X more in the US than in other countries. Same thing with medical equipment etc. Price reduction could be accomplished by easing restrictions on international wholesale purchasing by distributors and/or attaching windfall profit taxes to companies selling US products at prices disproportionate to their charges to international consumers.

Pricing Transparency.
Patients should be able to determine who is charging what for a particular service. Additionally, as unbelievable as it may seem, healthcare providers often haven't the slightest clue as to what particular drugs or products cost. Where practical, every product in the medical workplace should be price tagged. You'd be amazed at the difference that would make. Consumer options 101!

Insurance Portability.
Often employees are covered by company healthcare policies. The company cost per employee is usually significantly discounted through negotiations with the company's insurance provider. When an employee is laid off, he/she should be able to buy their own coverage through the company's policy at the company's negotiated price. They should not have to pay up to twice the rate for an identical plan simply because they lost their job. Insurance policy rates should also be portable across state lines. Consumers should be able to tap into rates offered by an insurance company in one state if that company was willing to insure them as citizens in another state.

Catastrophic Coverage.
Whether it is reasonable to force every American to carry full health insurance is debatable. Not so for catastrophic coverage. If universally required of US healthcare consumers, insurance carriers could design a relatively low cost catastrophic policy. Individuals reporting to the ED for non-emergent care would optimally be held to a higher standard of financial obligation than they are now.

Open Access to Medical Results.
With appropriate Tort Reform, public access to reports of complication rates, procedure success etc for facilities and providers would not only be possible, it would be probable. You could actually see if surgery at a hospital with a high infection rate was really your cup of tea. That would take performance improvement to a logical next step. Consumer options 102!

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Maybe you can explain why the same insurance company repeatedly denied my sisters claims for surgery for breaking a vertebrate

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It's "vertebrae".
"Breaking a vertebrate" might refer to taming a wild horse, but it does not refer to a fracture.

Without details it is impossible to address your sister's situation specifically, but there are many, many instances where the recommended treatment for Vertebral Fracture is nonsurgical. That may have been a source of confusion. Just so you'll know.

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This has already been handled by the states

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No. It hasn't.

States have tweaked a broken system. That's it. They've capped settlements to injured parties. Some states have made it harder for an injured party to seek resolution. That's about the extent of it. Do either of those actually sound like viable solutions to you?

As previously posted, here's the problem:
Practically speaking, an attorney sees an injured client in his office, and wants to help. He is often not going to be adequately apprised of appropriate facts (including those exonerating the defendant) until discovery, deposition and occasionally not even until trial. The result is that 40% of such cases are brought without merit.

Once the attorney realizes well into the process his case probably lacks merit, why doesn't he drop it to save time and further personal expense? Because in the US system 30% of those meritless cases still end in findings for the plaintiff.

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Solution: reform the US Tort System.
Do what is done in the EU:
The European Tort Model
In the EU, there are 2 parallel options for plaintiffs.
The plaintiff can choose either.

Option One:
An adversarial approach virtually identical to our current Tort System,
but with the requirement that the loser pays some of the winner's costs. I'd propose the elimination of caps for pain and suffering under this option.

Option Two:
A Worker's Comp type system.
Injured patients would bring claims before a review board responsible for determining if compensation is in order and, if so, how much. The Board would then authorize payment out of a "compensation pool" which would be immediately awarded to the plaintiff. For a patient to get paid, the board would not have to find the doctor at fault, or that medical negligence caused whatever pain and suffering the patient is experiencing. Money for patient relief would come from a national compensation fund paid for by malpractice premiums placed on doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, etc.
The goal of such a system is not to find fault or establish causation. It is to provide compensation to injured patients regardless of cause.

This dual option mechanism is employed throughout Europe. The vast majority of plaintiffs go with Option #2.

Because in the current US system only 46% of settlement money actually gets to plaintiffs, use of a European style system with a 5-10% overhead could nearly DOUBLE AVAILABLE SETTLEMENTS to US plaintiffs. It would concomitantly eliminate cause for wasteful defensive medicine knocking 10-20% off of US healthcare costs

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I've been in healthcare for 20 years.

It's expensive because the primary payor source is a government entity: Medicare.

Because of this, market forces are not to be found.

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Then how do you explain the fact that the US spends more per capita than any country on earth in healthcare? Even countries with single payer systems pay less for their care than we do. So I'm not buying the argument that more market forces will always lead to less expensive healthcare.

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First, because there are few market forces.

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That still doesn't explain how, in countries with systems that would be explained by fewer market forces, they still pay less. If "more market forces" automatically led to less expensive healthcare, then the US wouldn't be paying as much as we do.

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Second, because political leaders, mostly lawyers, have a personal disincentive to truly reform the single most prominent cost driver.

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Which is?

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Third, because our MSM-fed populous is too lazy and distracted to give it much thought, but they do know Ann Romney has a horse.

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Oh give it a rest. I'm asking actual questions here. Don't respond with what is basically "everybody else is a dumbass, that's why."

We won't really know the answer to those questions until we have a straight up comparison on volumes of procedures performed and length of life after diagnosed with different conditions. It's no secret that the most expensive segment US healthcare are with the elderly.

How does the US compare for each individual on average between 25-35? 36-46? I don't think I've seen a study that does this.