If health care in the United States operated in a free market, than individual buyers (patients) and sellers (physicians) would interact free of government intervention. Any intermediaries between buyers and sellers would exist only if they proved to facilitate efficient exchange. For example, in a free market, many physicians would choose to affiliate with a hospital rather than construct their own dedicated medical facility. Similarly, several physicians might join together to form a practice group in order to share costs and patients. On the other side of the ledger, patients might choose to pay their own health care costs, as they do for food and other scarce services, or a group of buyers might pool their resources together in order to collectively purchase health care.

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