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As private equity dominates wheelchair market, users wait months for repairs

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Re: As private equity dominates wheelchair market, users wait months for repairs

#151

Post by heyoni »

somethoughts wrote: post #137
minusLik wrote: post #67

What the article does not seem to mention is that an usual electric wheelchair costs about $65,000 (and is intended to be replaced every six years or so). This and the non-availability of replacement parts is why some wheelchair users started a project to open-source a wheelchair from standard parts: https://themif.org/ Louis Rossmann interviewed the founder of the project here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaAj59…

To be honest - it actually seems like a risky Private Equity play as I bet the $65000 sticker price is due to the fact that Medicare is footing the bill. Medicare is likely what is requiring a regulation grade wheel chair, not the users themselves. I bet a huge segment of the user base could easily self purchase a mobility scooter and achieve the same quality of life if the price point was such that they could out of…

In my experience, the chairs and how they’re built aren’t what adds to the price tag; the fact that an insurance company is paying is what is.

My daughter literally just got approved for a talking device that would otherwise cost us $4000. It’s a Samsung tablet with $300 software and an attached speaker and comes with some sort of repair agreement. I can buy and break 20 iPads for that price…and we did end up buying one with the software on its own.

If you want to know who’s causing waste, look to the ones who stand to benefit from it.

Re: As private equity dominates wheelchair market, users wait months for repairs

#152

Post by TkTech »

makmanalp wrote: post #148
ptero wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect in the US the lack of competition is due to regulation and liability, not VCs.

Isn't the auto industry notoriously jam packed with regulation?

Weirdly, not really in the US. The regulations are all a little pointless because it's a "self-regulated" industry. Look at the cyber truck - stuck floor pedals and trunk closer that cuts off fingers, or trivial to clone car fobs.

Re: As private equity dominates wheelchair market, users wait months for repairs

#154

Post by throwaway11460 »

krapp wrote: post #142
Der_Einzige wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When replicators are invented, most political problems will disappear. Star Trek got it right.

Star Trek style replicators can't be invented. The laws of physics won't allow it. It will always cost more energy and be vastly less efficient to assemble a cup of coffee atom by atom than it would to just grow the beans, have them picked, packaged and shipped, and make it yourself, and unlike in Star Trek, energy in the real world isn't free. You might say we could come close with advanced 3D printing and some kind…

Energy in Star Trek is not free either, just too cheap to meter. They use fusion and matter-antimatter reactors. Once we get there we will also have more than enough energy to power the potential replicator.

Though I agree we probably won't be using it to replicate a cup of Earl Grey for a very long time.

Re: As private equity dominates wheelchair market, users wait months for repairs

#155

Post by carabiner »

minusLik wrote: post #67

What the article does not seem to mention is that an usual electric wheelchair costs about $65,000 (and is intended to be replaced every six years or so). This and the non-availability of replacement parts is why some wheelchair users started a project to open-source a wheelchair from standard parts: https://themif.org/ Louis Rossmann interviewed the founder of the project here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaAj59…

Should be "a usual" because "usual" starts with a consonant sound. Otherwise could sound like "unusual."

Re: As private equity dominates wheelchair market, users wait months for repairs

#156

Post by throwaway48476 »

tmaly wrote: post #83
nickff wrote: post #10

Private 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 is not just wheelchairs and nursing homes. My eye doctor office got bought out. They pay the doctors as little as possible and maximize the number of appointments per day.

How hard is it for them to leave and start their own business?

Re: As private equity dominates wheelchair market, users wait months for repairs

#157

Post by throwaway48476 »

pdonis wrote: post #21
nickff wrote: post #10

Private 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…

The problem is that the people with money have no incentive go innovate, they already have money. The people without money have reason to innovate but no means to do so. So everything stagnated.

Re: As private equity dominates wheelchair market, users wait months for repairs

#158

Post by wizzwizz4 »

wolverine876 wrote: post #105
Gormo wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first step is to stop thinking of "the public" as a monolithic entity whose interests are pursued by the government, and instead recognize that control over things that have a major impact on the lives, welfare, freedom, and prosperity need to be things they can effectively control or opt-out of as individuals . Regulatory intervention makes it harder, not easier, for individuals to take charge of these matters f…

> The first step is to stop thinking of "the public" as a monolithic entity whose interests are pursued by the government, and instead recognize that control over things that have a major impact on the lives, welfare, freedom, and prosperity need to be things they can effectively control or opt-out of as individuals. If AI takes over the world, or others pump lots of GHG into the air and cause climate change, or some…

> If AI takes over the world,

This is a potential concern, but no currently-existing computer system (that I'm aware of) is any kind of risk for that. Certainly, nothing OpenAI has produced is.

I'd say the currently-real unaligned-agent behaviour of our institutions is a bigger risk than currently-fictional computer-instantiated unaligned superintelligence. And we do have regulation in place to constrain the behaviour of many institutions: governments, corporations, utility operators, and so on.

The unaligned agent problem was not discovered by the AI safety people. They merely named it.

Re: As private equity dominates wheelchair market, users wait months for repairs

#159

Post by SllX »

ptero wrote: post #144
VHRanger wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wheelchair users have no bargaining power against wheelchair makers. Car buyers have leverage. Normally this exorbitant price would incentivize competition in a healthy market, but the private equity players presumably make that difficult. There might also be barriers to entry in the market.

I suspect in the US the lack of competition is due to regulation and liability, not VCs.

It’s more the divorce between the receiver, the seller and the buyer. Sellers are not selling to the people using the wheelchairs, they’re selling to insurance companies and the government. Both types of entities have a proclivity for overpaying.

This is also true for most drugs. If we removed private insurance companies, Medicare and Medicaid in their totality from the equation, the market rate for drugs and medical equipment would drop into the abyss compared to where they’re at now.

Re: As private equity dominates wheelchair market, users wait months for repairs

#160

Post by esafak »

nickff wrote: post #10

Private 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.

Is there anything that PE doesn't turn to shit?
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