[flagged]
Don't hate the player, hate the game.
As private equity dominates wheelchair market, users wait months for repairs
31–40 of 330 posts
Re: As private equity dominates wheelchair market, users wait months for repairs
#32Private equity discovered that regulations, compliance requirements, & other similar barriers to entry are the most effective 'moats' which allow businesses to raise prices and have little impact on demand; they are now exploiting this 'hack' ruthlessly.
This is a good illustration of the difference between capitalism and a free market. In a free market, "moats" like regulatory capture would not exist . In a market like this, where the customers--wheelchair users--are generally pretty savvy about what they need, a free market would have no trouble providing products that met customer needs at an affordable cost, because customers would have meaningful choices about w…
In free market it's also OK to cut costs as much as possible, making chair that explode and kill the user one day after the warranty expires.
That's why we have regulation: to establish the minimum standards.
Simple medical devices like wheelchairs (Class I or Class II) are also not super over-regulated, you don't need to do clinical trials to certify them. All-in-all it'll cost you around $10m, which is not at all a moat.
Re: As private equity dominates wheelchair market, users wait months for repairs
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
And your better alternative is........... ?
China is doing pretty well. In before a wall of text about how China is doomed or whatever.
China is doing well is a funny take post covid. The argument worked much better 10 years ago when they still had large growth.
"Doomed" I don't know but they seem quite stuck now between a lot of internal problems.
Re: As private equity dominates wheelchair market, users wait months for repairs
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
And your better alternative is........... ?
China is doing pretty well. In before a wall of text about how China is doomed or whatever.
only once they switched to free market principles under deng. iirc as their growth has been slowing it has been due to increasing state clampdown on the economy
Re: As private equity dominates wheelchair market, users wait months for repairs
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a good illustration of the difference between capitalism and a free market. In a free market, "moats" like regulatory capture would not exist . In a market like this, where the customers--wheelchair users--are generally pretty savvy about what they need, a free market would have no trouble providing products that met customer needs at an affordable cost, because customers would have meaningful choices about w…
private equity is just exploiting existing regulations that already make it hard for new members to enter the market & add competition no? doesn’t seem like many new regulations are being enacted to gain market dominance, working with what exists is enough?
> existing regulations
Which were put in place in response to other rich people lobbying the government for regulations that favored them and their companies. Perhaps there haven't been many recent ones put in place specifically in response to lobbying by private equity companies (though I'm not sure that's true). But that doesn't change the main point.
Re: As private equity dominates wheelchair market, users wait months for repairs
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a good illustration of the difference between capitalism and a free market. In a free market, "moats" like regulatory capture would not exist . In a market like this, where the customers--wheelchair users--are generally pretty savvy about what they need, a free market would have no trouble providing products that met customer needs at an affordable cost, because customers would have meaningful choices about w…
In free market it's also OK to cut costs as much as possible, making chair that explode and kill the user one day after the warranty expires. That's why we have regulation: to establish the minimum standards. Simple medical devices like wheelchairs (Class I or Class II) are also not super over-regulated, you don't need to do clinical trials to certify them. All-in-all it'll cost you around $10m, which is not at all a…
Liability still exists in a free market. Regulations are government's way of giving you immunity from liability laws, or not enacting them, in exchange for doing things a very specific ways. This creates moates.
Re: As private equity dominates wheelchair market, users wait months for repairs
#37[flagged]
I mean fair, but helping people like that teaches empathy which we're severely lacking in today's world. There is something special we humans experience when helping others for nothing and return and I think that a lot of people are blinded by never experiencing what it means to help others.
A lot of arguments are "imagine if it was you", but I think a fairer argument would be "what if it was somebody you like/love"?
I personally wouldn't mind jumping off a bridge if I became useless, but what about the people who want to continue living who are afraid? And what about the people that like/love me?
Re: As private equity dominates wheelchair market, users wait months for repairs
#38Private equity discovered that regulations, compliance requirements, & other similar barriers to entry are the most effective 'moats' which allow businesses to raise prices and have little impact on demand; they are now exploiting this 'hack' ruthlessly.
It’s interesting. The regulation ostensibly protects vulnerable classes from exploitation and lets them use reimbursement structures to defray cost. At the same time it causes costs to go up and allows people to buy their way across the moat.
I wonder if regulation that stipulated that a change of ownership of some percentage would require recertification of the entity would stem this a bit. Or restrictions on buying HIPAA covered businesses with patient data. Might pose a problem to folks in the business today, but could slow down the massive acquire-and-merge train in these industries.
Re: As private equity dominates wheelchair market, users wait months for repairs
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
We've seen consolidation across the whole economy (which have vastly different regulation schemes) so I'm skeptical of it being just regulation driven
> I'm skeptical of it being just regulation driven It seems to be blatantly obviously regulation in this case. There are electric wheelchairs in other countries. What's stopping them from being imported are the regulations.
Then, how would it fix things then if it wasn't private equity dominating that market?
There would still be regulations that would allow public equity wheelchair makers to jack prices.