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Although I’m for universal income, one of my concerns is how do you prevent companies from abusing it, and inflating prices even more. Drugs and medical treat

Although I’m for universal income, one of my concerns is how do you prevent companies from abusing it, and inflating prices even more. Drugs and medical treatments in the US are already very expensive compared to the same in other countries. If everyone suddenly has an extra $1k/mo, why wouldn’t the drug companies increase their prices even more? To me (as a European) it seems like a better option is universal healthcare, to at least make life critical medicine and treatments available to everyone, no matter their financial status.

AnthonyMouse 9y ago
> Although I’m for universal income, one of my concerns is how do you prevent companies from abusing it, and inflating prices even more. That's only how prices work for uncompetitive markets. In a competitive market anyone who raised prices would lose business to competitors. Moreover, monopolies can raise prices in response to anything that causes the poor (or anyone else) to have more money. The problem isn't a UBI, it's the existence of uncompetitive markets. > To me (as a European) it seems like a better option is universal healthcare, to at least make life critical medicine and treatments available to everyone, no matter their financial status. Price controls are independent of single payer. If you had single payer and monopoly/patented suppliers without price controls then prices would be... high. So nobody does that. But you can also have price controls without having single payer. The problem with price controls is econ 101 -- you get underproduction. And when the thing being produced is medicine and medical research, that isn't good. The counties with single payer do it anyway, and thereby don't pay their share of the research cost and cause there to be less research than there would be. We could do the same thing, single payer or not, and pay less for medicine. But then there would be even less research. A possible workaround is to subsidize medical research directly, but then you're not saving the money, you're just spending it on the same thing with different routing. Which method of funding research is more effective is open for debate, but you can't avoid paying for the research unless you don't want to have it.

AnthonyMouse 9y ago

> Although I’m for universal income, one of my concerns is how do you prevent companies from abusing it, and inflating prices even more. That's only how prices work for uncompetitive markets. In a competitive market anyone who raised prices would lose business to competitors. Moreover, monopolies can raise prices in response to anything that causes the poor (or anyone else) to have more money. The problem isn't a UBI, it's the existence of uncompetitive markets. > To me (as a European) it seems like a better option is universal healthcare, to at least make life critical medicine and treatments available to everyone, no matter their financial status. Price controls are independent of single payer. If you had single payer and monopoly/patented suppliers without price controls then prices would be... high. So nobody does that. But you can also have price controls without having single payer. The problem with price controls is econ 101 -- you get underproduction. And when the thing being produced is medicine and medical research, that isn't good. The counties with single payer do it anyway, and thereby don't pay their share of the research cost and cause there to be less research than there would be. We could do the same thing, single payer or not, and pay less for medicine. But then there would be even less research. A possible workaround is to subsidize medical research directly, but then you're not saving the money, you're just spending it on the same thing with different routing. Which method of funding research is more effective is open for debate, but you can't avoid paying for the research unless you don't want to have it.