Or Maryland itself (the existing policy is something I posted about years and years ago, IIRC). Or the UK or any number of other countries that get similarly involved in health care pricing.
Here's the problem for libertarians*. By and large, they don't feel that certain goods (housing, education, nutrition, old-age pensions, medical care) are special enough to warrant any sort of non-market guarantee of provision, or really a different distribution system than the one we use for tchotchkes. Plus government quotas or ceilings are inherently immoral, cause the threat of force is being used to prevent people from making their own decisions etc.
But most people are fine with policies like that if they feel the system is working for them. So libertarians often feel the need to argue not just that this would be an attack on freedom, but that for practical purposes it will backfire. The failing public school monopoly actually prevents competition that would provide better education in blighted urban areas! Social security crowds out better investments which would grow the economy for everyone! Minimum wages are hurting poor black teenagers by making them prohibitively costly to hire!
Buuuuut those arguments aren't always strictly true, nor is the libertarian's heart really in them. Social security programs reduce elderly poverty rates, mandatory and publicly funded primary education reduces illiteracy, public health initiatives reduce disease, etc. Now I'm sure it's easy enough to show these don't "work" in some economic sense: just do a quick supply/demand graph, highlight a triangle, and bingo! Deadweight loss! Not socially optimal! But that's not going to outweigh people's actual experiences (or perceptions if you like), so if you say "it'll fail horribly because all government interventions always do" they're not going to change their minds.
spoiler (click to show/hide)
*"libertarians" for the purposes of this post will include anyone who views things through the lens of negative liberty. Deal with it.
