Compare: Google's founders can buy all the yachts they could possibly eat, yet Google Searches are offered for free.

If we could get healthcare to that level, it would be great.

For a less extreme example: Wal-Mart and Amazon have made plenty of people very rich, and they charge customers for their goods; but their entrance into the markets have arguable brought down prices.

> Google's founders can buy all the yachts they could possibly eat, yet Google Searches are offered for free.

Google searches cost many billions of dollars: your confusion is because the customer isn’t the person searching but the advertisers paying to influence them. Healthcare can’t work like that not just because the real costs are both much higher and resistant to economies of scale but, critically, there aren’t people with deep pockets lining up to pay for you to be healthy. That’s why every other developed country sees better results for less money: keeping people healthy is a social good, and political forces work for that better than raw economic incentives.

Wal-Mart and Amazon have reduced wages for employees and the quality of purchased goods more than they have improved prices for consumers.

And Google search, a service on the level of a public utility, has been degrading noticeably for years in the face of shareholders demanding more and more returns.