Free Market is available in some countries that have single payer, for those who want a private room and gourmet meals.
It's available in the UK. I love their system. Everyone is fully covered, but if you want to pay extra, you can get the gold treatment with a private supplemental health insurance policy. Even if you decide on paying for private insurance, it's less than what we pay here in the US.
Right, but you're sort of skipping over the controversy that creates. To wit:
Hospitals accused of creating 'a two-tier' health system after accepting payments for treatments available on the NHS
Hospitals have been accused of allowing wealthy patients to jump the queue after it emerged some are charging patients for treatments available on the NHS.
Patients who arent eligible for certain types of care or who dont want to wait can pay for bone scans or courses of IVF.
The hospitals involved describe the treatment as self-funded rather than private and say the rates are significantly lower than patients would pay if they went private.
Hospitals have accepted payments for treatments available on the NHS. Those involved said they were 'self-funded' and added the rates were significantly lower than private hospitals
However, the practice has raised fears of a two-tier NHS - in which those who can afford to pay get ahead while the less well-off suffer.
Also, this bit seems to indicate where we're heading by nationalizing health care:
Examples include Homerton University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in East London, which tells patients in need of fertility treatment that they have the option of NHS, private, or self-funded care.
It states: Self-funding NHS patients are those who have to pay us for their treatment costs by cash or credit care prior to starting the treatment.
This option allows you to have your treatment when you are not eligible for NHS-funded treatment or you wish to have your treatment with a minimal wait.
Reasons for being refused NHS-funded fertility treatment range from the womans age to her weight or her husbands refusal to give up smoking.
(really? NHS refused her treatment because her husband refused to quit smoking???)
OR
Will foundation trust reforms lead to a two-tier NHS? | Healthcare Network | Guardian Professional
NHS staff slam 'two-tier' system | UK | Express.co.uk - Home of the Daily and Sunday Express
The point of all this is that a two-tiered system defeats the purpose of most of the health care reform agenda. Allowing richer patients to buy better treatment re-introduces the very thing they're trying to eliminate. They don't want the relative quality of a person's health care to depend on their ability to pay.