For the record, my age is 71.
I read a very relevant article in the Wall Street Journal last week, on medical care in Pennsylvania (by Thomas Burton). The State began collecting and publishing data on readmission rates, infection rates, and the like of Pennsylvania hospitals. Employers and unions who chose only the best-performing hospitals substantially reduced the cost of care. Hershey was able to reduce costs by 50%. Needless to say, the bad-performing hospitals forcefully insisted that the studies were misleading and unneeded.

Insurance carriers refuse to turn over information on cost of care, but Hershey had enough clout to compare cost of care to performance on the services it purchased. It concluded that the correlation between price and quality of hospital care is zero.

The moral is that the market system is completely worthless in giving people good health care, because the providers will not disclose any of the information needed to make a choice (unless the government makes them disclose it, and that would be "socialism.")

Two or three years ago, I spent about ten days in a hospital. I was impressed. I had an individual room, the nurses were very nice, and there was a choice of channels on TV. All things considered, the food was astonishingly good. And a nice woman came around and solicited my opinion on the menu. But pleased as I was with all these things, they made me a little uneasy, because I suspected that somehow they were emphasizing the wrong things. Now I'm quite sure they were.

Hospitals have every incentive to provide the best possible hotel services, because it attracts an upscale paying clientele. The only incentive to keep the infection rate down is the possibility of a lawsuit for medical malpractice. So much for the market system.