Uh...it still has the "you need this or you see a loved one suffer" thing going for it which leads to an ability to seek maximum profit. Large multinationals are monopolizing by buying out small vet practices, also allowing them to set prices. And those monopolies not only offer their own insurance, but there are also numerous others offering pet insurance.
So it might be the "closest thing to a fully free market in healthcare there is (in the US)", in that it's slightly better than the human healthcare market...but that's it. It's still nowhere close.
And there are plenty of other markets, all of them cheaper, and many with better outcomes...though I guess few countries with "freer" markets (since pretty much every other western country either has a single payer system, or has mandatory private insurance or similar, such as Switzerland), so I guess if your point is that having a "free market" approach to healthcare leads to worse outcomes in every instance?
Veterinary medicine technically deals with property, not really loved ones. Numbered dairy cow or muddy sow needing a c-section is an asset, not a loved family member. Pets are loved but they are property with negligible economic value, unlike a human life.
Where I live those are two different kinds of vets, with two distinct clienteles. While it's possible to find mixed practices (cattle + pets) in smaller towns, it's typically not the case in larger cities. There's no point in having your practice located downtown if you go to your clients anyway.
> Pets are loved but they are property with negligible economic value, unlike a human life.
You're missing the point, which is not about "economic value" (whatever you mean by that -- the amount someone would be willing to pay to save their own life? Their income?). The point is that no one who loves their pets dearly wants them to suffer, which puts the buyer in a worse bargaining position. I would (and have) paid many thousands to save a pet's life.
Fine, for the terminally pedantic - I refer to the fact that the prospective buyer can not easily say "nah" and walk away; healthcare for a loved one can't be viewed as a purely economic transaction. It's easy to say "I don't need that expensive a car", even possible to say "I can make it work without a car", it's incredibly hard to not get Spot his life saving surgery because of money.
It ceases to be a purely economic function because people can't just walk away, and that has market effects that mean the typical pressures of a free market (such as 'supply and demand') become muddied. Sufficient supply is irrelevant if Spot is suffering -right now-, all the providers form a monopoly, and their prices are massively inflated.
The point of my pedantic comment was to note that the goal of seeking maximum profit is universal, what is not is being able to extract maximum profit, which is made possible by supply and demand, which you alluded to with "you need this or you see a loved one suffer".
>It ceases to be a purely economic function because people can't just walk away, and that has market effects that mean the typical pressures of a free market (such as 'supply and demand') become muddied.
Supply and demand has not become muddied. The ability to extract maximum profit is from the fact that there is very little supply and extremely high demand.
>Sufficient supply is irrelevant if Spot is suffering -right now-, all the providers form a monopoly, and their prices are massively inflated.
Sufficient supply and demand implies lots of agents supplying demand and lots of agents willing to buy, resulting in a situation where either party can walk away from the other to enable price discovery. If all the providers form a monopoly, they no longer act as individual agents, and hence there is no longer sufficient supply.
The dynamics of supply and demand and price discovery do not quite care about the suffering during the process, which is where the concept of insurance comes in. It could be provided by well regulated private markets with sufficiently well behaved actors, or by society at large via taxes, but the concept is the same. You prepare for unaffordable, unexpected expenses by "paying" in advance so that at the time of needing the product/services, you are not having to negotiate because the negotiations have already happened.
So it might be the "closest thing to a fully free market in healthcare there is (in the US)", in that it's slightly better than the human healthcare market...but that's it. It's still nowhere close.
And there are plenty of other markets, all of them cheaper, and many with better outcomes...though I guess few countries with "freer" markets (since pretty much every other western country either has a single payer system, or has mandatory private insurance or similar, such as Switzerland), so I guess if your point is that having a "free market" approach to healthcare leads to worse outcomes in every instance?