One of the more interesting television commercials I see is an ad sponsored by Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA). The message: if you have cancer, we want you.

Welcome to a small glimpse of how the market for health care might be different.

If we had a genuinely free market for health care, ads like this would not be rare and unusual. There would be centers of excellence for heart disease and diabetes and dozens of other afflictions. Through television, radio, the Internet and other means, these centers would be seeking out people with problems and offering to solve them—just like in other markets.