AI will make free market healthcare affordable to the masses

So a very common critique of free markets, that is repeated ad nauseam here by leftist visitors to this sub, is that the free market can’t handle healthcare, that it would only deliver quality healthcare to the rich. When asked why, they will say it’s because companies are too greedy or something.

Aside from the fact that no country, including the US has a pure free market healthcare system, let’s concede this point for the sake of the argument. How come free markets can’t deliver in healthcare while they can in so many other sectors?

Well, there are two things that determine the price of goods and services: supply and demand. Demand for healthcare is inelastic, which doesn’t help, but demand is inelastic for food, internet, transportation, clothes, etc. too, yet those things are much cheaper. So the ultimate reason healthcare is expensive is because of a lack of supply, specifically labor.

Labor costs are what make healthcare expensive. Doctors, especially in the US, earn very high wages, because they are scarce. Nurses are scarce due to labor shortages as well and even though they don’t earn as much their quantity still add up to labor costs. Add to this all the other administrators and workers in the healthcare sector, combined with the Baumol effect and the fact that aging societies and increased wealth raise the demand for healthcare, and you end up in a situation where total healthcare costs are near 15% of GDP, which is insanely high.

This is not to say inefficient government policies don’t make healthcare more expensive than it needs to be, they do, however I understand the argument that currently competition won’t make healthcare affordable to the poor. It’s a good thing then that the free market has come up with an alternative solution to this problem: artificial intelligence. Private companies like OpenAI and Google are investing billions in AI and commercializing them for profit. AI robots have the potential to replace doctors and nurses, and when they inevitably do, labor costs, and with it total healthcare costs, will vastly decrease. This would make free market competitive healthcare viable like in many other sectors now. People could start hospitals like they start restaurants or stores. It will be possible to get all the care you need without government subsidies or meddling. We will also finally stop hearing this cliche old leftist argument, and the free market will win.