> A market naturally matches supply (healthcare infrastructure) and demand (sick people).
Even ignoring that healthcare lacks the factors that approximate the rational choice model’s information requirements well enough for it decisions in that space in a market to even reflect average net utility well, a market matches supply with money; it matches to need only to the extent that willingness to pay is driven only by expected personal utility, which it's not (because money also experiences declining marginal utility) when financial resources of each potential customer vary wildly.
> > it matches to need only to the extent that willingness to pay is driven only by expected personal utility
> How else would you define need?
The question seems odd and seems to likely to be driven by a misunderstanding of the quoted material, so I'll try to reexplain what I intended in a way which I hope resolves the question.
Expected net utility given complete information of the consequences of a decision is the only plausible definition of need.
It doesn't, however correspond in any particular way (even ignoring the information problems that are enormous in healthcare) to the number of tokens one is willing to exchange for a thing in the market compared to other participants unless the quantity of tokens available to each participant is the same.
When the tokens are money and the context is a real capitalist society, that's decidedly far from the case.
> Expected net utility given complete information of the consequences of a decision is the only plausible definition of need.
This doesn't exist in real life so it's almost laughable to talk about it like it's an actual thing. People don't have "Expected net utility" functions that spit out a number (denominated in what?) when faced with some choice.
> It doesn't, however correspond in any particular way (even ignoring the information problems that are enormous in healthcare) to the number of tokens one is willing to exchange for a thing in the market compared to other participants unless the quantity of tokens available to each participant is the same.
1) Even if everyone had the same amount of tokens at some time t different people have different values and thus would allocate their tokens differently to different things as they saw fit, not to mention there are other circumstances that people have in their life that are beyond cash reserves (having a house, having a car, having a family, having a pet, having a passion for art collection, etc). They would be allocating their tokens in accordance with this hierarchy since they need to reserve their tokens for other priorities in their life.
2) There's no way to even quantify "needs" across people without some market/pricing function unless you have some third party quantifying or ranking the needs of everyone but I already mentioned that. This is what universal healthcare does where some bureaucratic apparatus determines, quantifies, and ranks the needs of patients and allocates healthcare resources.
This rests on an assumption that utility is comparable between individuals, which isn't present in all theories.
"How much would you pay for it" clearly is comparable between individuals, but (IMO) declaring that doing so defines the proper outcome is circular and/or verges on the naturalistic fallacy.
Even ignoring that healthcare lacks the factors that approximate the rational choice model’s information requirements well enough for it decisions in that space in a market to even reflect average net utility well, a market matches supply with money; it matches to need only to the extent that willingness to pay is driven only by expected personal utility, which it's not (because money also experiences declining marginal utility) when financial resources of each potential customer vary wildly.