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Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#211

Post by ivanhoe »

cs702 wrote: post #4

"I started a manufacturing company in Little Elm, about 35 miles north of Dallas, to produce the first-ever automatically retracting syringe to eliminate the risk of nurses contracting HIV through accidental needle sticks. The syringe received rave reviews from nurses, hospital executives and public health officials, a major grant from the National Institutes of Health and robust private investment. But when my partn…

The trick is in how you define "the better". Problem is that hospitals don't buy just syringes, they buy lots of medical supplies at once, and corporations can offer much better deals on such orders, you can just buy everything at once. They then use that position to push exclusive deals with hospitals and kill the small players. It is still a free market at work, hospital gets the best deal business-wise, but it has retrograde effects on the progress and end-users.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#212

Post by bluejekyll »

Noos wrote: post #190
bluejekyll wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AHCA, Obamacare is definitely better than before, it guarantees open access to many who didn't have it before. A good thing. But it didn't go far enough. It played in to the corporate healthcare system demands by not offering a competitive public option. The so called Blue Dog democrats blocked that, which is such a shame. Far better than anything the Republicans have put on the table. The problem is that we basicall…

It is not better at all. The deductibles increased tremendously, and it wound up turning normal insurance into expensive catastrophic insurance. Many poor people are worse off under it, because at least before it was possible to pay for insurance with a decent deductible as part time help. Now most of them just eat the tax penalty (or avoid it, there is a provision where it can be waived if you demonstrate it's liter…

> Now most of them just eat the tax penalty (or avoid it, there is a provision where it can be waived if you demonstrate it's literally too expensive to afford) and have no insurance at all.

Don't the increased numbers of insured people contradict this statement? Being poor still sucks, and having to make this choice, still sucks. But it also expanded Medicaid coverage to more people.

They should have offered Medicare as an choice in every market, or at least every market where there are fewer than three options on the exchange.

> mandatory from 18-up catastrophic insurance at low premiums.

Isn't that what the law does? The mandatory bit is enforced with the tax penalty.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#213

Post by shmerl »

mannykannot wrote: post #210
shmerl wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But what guarantees this freedom? That's up to the society which wants to have a free market. For instance, anti-trust laws is one way of doing it. > The government is supposed to step in to block monopolies from controlling the market, but that implies that the government is intervening in the market. Someone should to step in here, whether it's government or not, is another question. But clearly, if market has no…

> Someone should to step in here, whether it's government or not, is another question. Actually, it is the central question, because without a feasible answer all you have is a fine-sounding principle that is utterly infeasible.

It's the same question of how society is regulating things. It's quite a broad subject, but we were talking about the principle here.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#214

Post by clarkevans »

darpa_escapee wrote: post #202
valuearb wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obamacare increased the cost of my families healthcare from $400 a month to $1800 a month, and now my family doesn't have long term healthcare insurance. So please keep telling me how it's better.

Premiums were rising before the ACA was enacted and continued to rise afterwards [1]. > So please keep telling me how it's better. It expanded Medicaid and gave premium discounts to lower income brackets in states that accepted it. [1] http://i.imgur.com/sKUm2u0.jpg

The posted graph(http://imgur.com/sKUm2u0) shows only 1999 onward. From the articles I've seen, the trend of increasing health care costs (2-3x rate of inflation) extends as far back as the mid-80's. The broader trend is largely independent of the ACA and remains a huge issue.

Speaking of the graph... what is that huge gap that opened between between "Workers Contribution to Premiums" and "Premiums" in 2010, right when the ACA was signed into law? Is that just... raw profit taking?

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#215

Post by twoodfin »

valuearb wrote: post #142
bko wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A market in which buyers are not free to choose better products is not a free market. Most businesses can choose better products (not sure about hospital industry). They can also choose to sign an agreement that makes a supplier relationship exclusive. For instance, a restaurant can sign an agreement to accept only Mastercard. Is this not a free market?

A restaurant that agrees to exclusively accept Mastercard would be out of business very quickly (no matter how much Mastercard lowered its fees for them). That's why we don't have to regulate such behavior.

Not a restaurant, but Costco used to accept only Amex as a credit card (debit was a different story) and now only accepts Visa.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#216

Post by cmurf »

Most legislation, counted in line or pages, is written by industry. Legislators aren't writing this themselves.

And there's little in the way of taking a strong anti-trust (competition law) in politics. The Obama administration watched over, and permitted mergers that very blatantly reduce competition: multiple airlines, and drug companies. And it was more aggressive overall in applying competition law compared to previous Republican administrations. So, point is, even with a Democratic president, competition law isn't pressed strongly enough, let alone with a Republican in office where it's apparently "we need to recognize more natural monopolies, and help them whenever possible".

About the only thing all Americans might be able to agree on when it comes to politics, is the increasingly obvious need for a constitutional amendment getting money out of politics.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#217

Post by _Adam »

backtoyoujim wrote: post #52
lawrencewu wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why you are getting downvoted because you're absolutely right. The first three markets named (airlines, telecommunications, health care) are all heavily regulated and the barrier to entries are controlled by the government, not natural market forces. Monopolies are not all bad. Sometimes a company has a monopoly because they just offer a better product (Amazon, Google) and they shouldn't be punished for…

Amazon is a infested with scam storefronts. And Amazon is really compelled to do anything about it because they have no competition. Airlines have huge market barriers: getting and maintaining huge, expensive, gas guzzling aircraft. That is not a regulation barrier. Both telecomm and health care are intwined monopsonies backing the play of regional monopolies (cartels) backing federal congresspeople. I just don't buy…

>Amazon is a infested with scam storefronts.

Evidence?

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#218

Post by shkkmo »

valuearb wrote: post #136
enraged_camel wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Yes, regulations aren't perfect. Yes, regulatory capture is a problem. Neither of those things is a reason to not have regulations. >>that corrupting it with noise will have negligable effect on efficiency and technological development What really hurts efficiency and technological development is monopolies. A company that is a monopoly has very little reason to innovate. We se…

ISPs is an anecdote, economies of scale in most business means products are much cheaper if provided by large companies, so where is the cutoff between "monopolies" and simple economies of scale? The author claims 6 seed companies are worse than hundreds of seed companies, but doesn't give a single fact to support that claim.

> so where is the cutoff between "monopolies" and simple economies of scale?

If a market is closed to new entrants purely because the economies of scale make the established players products cheaper, then that is one thing.

That is rarely the case. Usually, as described here, there are also deliberate attempts by the established players to exclude new entrants via other means.

"The primary supplier of syringes, which controlled 80 percent of the market, structured an arrangement with a vast network of hospitals that essentially closed our industry to new firms for good."

> The author claims 6 seed companies are worse than hundreds of seed companies, but doesn't give a single fact to support that claim.

Yes, he does:

"The result is that the farmer’s share of each retail dollar of food has been collapsing, while consumers pay either the same or higher prices. Mega-corporations in the middle exploit their dominant market positions to reap all the profits."

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#219

Post by s73ver »

zeusk wrote: post #47
cs702 wrote: post #4

"I started a manufacturing company in Little Elm, about 35 miles north of Dallas, to produce the first-ever automatically retracting syringe to eliminate the risk of nurses contracting HIV through accidental needle sticks. The syringe received rave reviews from nurses, hospital executives and public health officials, a major grant from the National Institutes of Health and robust private investment. But when my partn…

What you're describing is a fair market, not a free one.

Who cares what it's called? Wouldn't we all prefer a fair market, even if it does mean regulation?

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#220

Post by s73ver »

bko wrote: post #67
cs702 wrote: post #4

"I started a manufacturing company in Little Elm, about 35 miles north of Dallas, to produce the first-ever automatically retracting syringe to eliminate the risk of nurses contracting HIV through accidental needle sticks. The syringe received rave reviews from nurses, hospital executives and public health officials, a major grant from the National Institutes of Health and robust private investment. But when my partn…

> A market in which buyers are not free to choose better products is not a free market. Most businesses can choose better products (not sure about hospital industry). They can also choose to sign an agreement that makes a supplier relationship exclusive. For instance, a restaurant can sign an agreement to accept only Mastercard. Is this not a free market?

No, that would not be a free market. That would be a supplier abusing their market position.
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