The free market has produced some quite amazing advances in medical technology. If the government would stop its practice of mandates, price controls, cost shifting and barriers to competition, medical services would once again be affordable. Education? Plenty of excellent private schools. If you want the service, pay for it. The free market has been superb with communications. Look at the evolution of cell phone technology. Steadily smaller, faster, cheaper and more capable. Thank $deity government isn't in the cell phone business. Housing? Another government clusterf***. We have an over-abundance of cheap food and I'm confident that we could ensure that people don't die of thirst without having men with guns confiscating our wealth and throwing us in prison.
What? The free market has produced very few advances in medical technology. Many of the advances in the basic sciences (including biochemistry and physics) are sponsored by the government. The same goes for drugs and medical equipment. The free market has actually not developed many items on its own, without piggy-backing on projects that were originally or partially government funded. Interestingly, the government also pays a large portion of the costs of training medical residents.
Price controls? There aren't any. I used to work at a very large biotech that sold good but absurdly expensive drugs, because there aren't any price controls that prevented it from doing so. And I actually argue for greater barriers to entry in the pharmaceutical and medical device industries. There are too many drugs and devices on the market that don't work, and may do more harm than good. One of the first things we learned about in my CS courses was the Therac-25. Additionally, things like metal-on-metal hip replacements should not have been approved, given their high failure rates and higher tendency of causing metal toxicity.