More Thoughts US Healthcare System

As noted in a comment by Karl, its not exactly a free market for healthcare when 60% of revenue for a hospital group come from Medicare and Medicaid, and the hospital subsidizes those with the remaining 40% of revenue from the private sector.

I guess its still a free market in the sense that there are competing hospitals, choice for patients, etc. but the payment structure implies that its being distorted quite a lot.

Assuming the case of the non-profit hospital group in the podcast is typical of the entire system, I have the following thoughts:

1. If we think the present system is bad, why are most of the popular reforms being considered designed around extending the government payment system rather than moving more towards a freer market? 

2. If people are worried about the rising cost of healthcare, how is moving the payment more and more to the government side going to reduce costs when the private 40% is already having to subsidize the medicare and medicaid portion? I think those subsidized costs will have to re-appear somewhere if it were 100% government, e.g. single payer. 

This suggests to me that any savings will be elusive.