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Can we call it a cartel market instead of private markets? The various healthcare leaders use their wealth to strengthen their position through laws. Most sec

Can we call it a cartel market instead of private markets? The various healthcare leaders use their wealth to strengthen their position through laws. Most sectors cannot operate like US medical, they are their own beast.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
> The various healthcare leaders use their wealth to strengthen their position through laws. Everyone who can does that. Laws and politics aren't a separate magisterium from business; there are no hard borders here.
- SkyBelow 7y ago
  There is one difference: violence. Laws are enforced on threat of violence. A business cannot force you to follow their procedures, at most they can deny you business. If I start selling drugs I import at a cheaper price, the government will use violence to stop me (including potential enslavement for a few years). That one difference is all that matters.
  - claudeganon 7y ago
    Then healthcare shouldn’t be a business because the natural result of refusing to provide it to those in need is injury and possibly death. That seems a greater and more imminent threat that people in the US face than most forms of state violence.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    That's a difference, yes, but orthogonal to the topic. As a businessman, as much as you can direct the behavior of both your customers and your employees, you can influence the lawmakers. After all, they too want money or things that money can buy. Violence is just one side of the coin that is power. The other side is voluntary (or technically voluntary but not quite) participation, which is primarily controlled by money. That's what makes politics and markets intertwined.
cwzwarich 7y ago
Isn't it natural to want to only "sell" to "customers" that are profitable? This is a natural function of other markets.
- pfarrell 7y ago
  Is there anything that shouldn’t be treated like a market? Street lights? Police and Fire protection? Water access?
  - cwzwarich 7y ago
    I don't think that health care (or the things you mention) should be treated as a market. I was only responding to the claim that this is a "cartel market" and not basic market behavior.
    - pfarrell 7y ago
      Gotcha. I've asked myself those questions to probe my feelings. I think things are going to get pretty ugly as the US starts to grapple with this again.
- jschwartzi 7y ago
  It's also pretty natural to not want to die because of an error on your credit report. Imagine, for a moment, that some other cwzwarich filed for bankruptcy a few years ago. By some (incredibly common) mistake, their bankruptcy ends up on your credit report. And you go in to the Emergency Room with a potentially life-threatening injury. The doctor runs credit on you before providing treatment, and because of this erroneous bankruptcy that you may not even know about(credit reports can only be reviewed once per year), you are placed in the hallway instead of being given a private bay despite the increased risk of infection. The hospital wanted to make room for paying customers, you see. So while it's natural to want to "sell" to "profitable customers" in this case applying free market principals to this makes a complete mockery of our health care system. And given the credit bureaus' track records of high inaccuracy and difficulty in disputing the reports, you're likely to get poorer treatment inexplicably, and entirely by accident.
Analemma_ 7y ago
Which law specifically permitted this behavior, and under what laws was it illegal before that?
Joe-Z 7y ago
Maybe finding new ways for the market isn't the best approach. What about publicly shaming the people who profit off of this? I remember there was a big outrage about Martin Shkreli's actions. Meanwhile the CEOs of these companies probably get lauded in business magazines. Calling these miserable, greedy, selfish bastards out for what they are could be a first step. God, how I'm hoping for a socialist revolution to take place within my lifetime...
- HarryHirsch 7y ago
  What about publicly shaming the people who profit off of this? We've seen that this is something that absolutely doesn't work. They (that's the people who matter) just find a scapegoat and everyone else carries on just as before. Shkreli ended up in prison, but Valeant is still busy making profit off the backs of patients, and despite Hillary Clinton's professed outrage prices for such drugs as Syprine haven't gone down a penny. Netflix has a documentary on the case. Where is the revolution? Where is single-payer healthcare?
  - magduf 7y ago
    Americans don't want single-payer healthcare. If they did, they'd be voting for it. Instead, they (especially poor, rural voters) strongly vote for the party that says they're keeping "socialism" out of healthcare. Americans are getting exactly what they voted for.
- ralusek 7y ago
  A socialist revolution? Do you mean that you'd like the US to become more like Sweden, a social democracy? Because it bears repeating, there is not a single desirable place to live on Earth that is not primarily governed by free market forces, including Sweden. Sweden, Norway, Canada...these are not socialist states. Also, let's be clear about one more thing. Martin Shkreli is not a free market capitalist, he's a crony. Leveraging state patent systems to create abusive monopolies is not free market capitalism, that is textbook crony capitalism and the enemy of a free market. Without arbitrary state enforcement of medical patents on insulin and epipens, do you think that these would be exceedingly expensive items? Are you being bankrupted by Benadryl? Hardly. There are absolutely elements of healthcare that are far better serviced by a command economy than a free market, and I think the weird hybrid system in the US is the worst of both worlds in many such cases. But a socialist revolution? Socialism is an authoritarian nightmare that cannot suitably answer any question related to scarcity or competence.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

> The various healthcare leaders use their wealth to strengthen their position through laws. Everyone who can does that. Laws and politics aren't a separate magisterium from business; there are no hard borders here.

SkyBelow 7y ago
There is one difference: violence. Laws are enforced on threat of violence. A business cannot force you to follow their procedures, at most they can deny you business. If I start selling drugs I import at a cheaper price, the government will use violence to stop me (including potential enslavement for a few years). That one difference is all that matters.
- claudeganon 7y ago
  Then healthcare shouldn’t be a business because the natural result of refusing to provide it to those in need is injury and possibly death. That seems a greater and more imminent threat that people in the US face than most forms of state violence.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  That's a difference, yes, but orthogonal to the topic. As a businessman, as much as you can direct the behavior of both your customers and your employees, you can influence the lawmakers. After all, they too want money or things that money can buy. Violence is just one side of the coin that is power. The other side is voluntary (or technically voluntary but not quite) participation, which is primarily controlled by money. That's what makes politics and markets intertwined.

cwzwarich 7y ago

Isn't it natural to want to only "sell" to "customers" that are profitable? This is a natural function of other markets.

pfarrell 7y ago
Is there anything that shouldn’t be treated like a market? Street lights? Police and Fire protection? Water access?
- cwzwarich 7y ago
  I don't think that health care (or the things you mention) should be treated as a market. I was only responding to the claim that this is a "cartel market" and not basic market behavior.
  - pfarrell 7y ago
    Gotcha. I've asked myself those questions to probe my feelings. I think things are going to get pretty ugly as the US starts to grapple with this again.
jschwartzi 7y ago
It's also pretty natural to not want to die because of an error on your credit report. Imagine, for a moment, that some other cwzwarich filed for bankruptcy a few years ago. By some (incredibly common) mistake, their bankruptcy ends up on your credit report. And you go in to the Emergency Room with a potentially life-threatening injury. The doctor runs credit on you before providing treatment, and because of this erroneous bankruptcy that you may not even know about(credit reports can only be reviewed once per year), you are placed in the hallway instead of being given a private bay despite the increased risk of infection. The hospital wanted to make room for paying customers, you see. So while it's natural to want to "sell" to "profitable customers" in this case applying free market principals to this makes a complete mockery of our health care system. And given the credit bureaus' track records of high inaccuracy and difficulty in disputing the reports, you're likely to get poorer treatment inexplicably, and entirely by accident.

Analemma_ 7y ago

Which law specifically permitted this behavior, and under what laws was it illegal before that?

Joe-Z 7y ago

Maybe finding new ways for the market isn't the best approach. What about publicly shaming the people who profit off of this? I remember there was a big outrage about Martin Shkreli's actions. Meanwhile the CEOs of these companies probably get lauded in business magazines. Calling these miserable, greedy, selfish bastards out for what they are could be a first step. God, how I'm hoping for a socialist revolution to take place within my lifetime...

HarryHirsch 7y ago
What about publicly shaming the people who profit off of this? We've seen that this is something that absolutely doesn't work. They (that's the people who matter) just find a scapegoat and everyone else carries on just as before. Shkreli ended up in prison, but Valeant is still busy making profit off the backs of patients, and despite Hillary Clinton's professed outrage prices for such drugs as Syprine haven't gone down a penny. Netflix has a documentary on the case. Where is the revolution? Where is single-payer healthcare?
- magduf 7y ago
  Americans don't want single-payer healthcare. If they did, they'd be voting for it. Instead, they (especially poor, rural voters) strongly vote for the party that says they're keeping "socialism" out of healthcare. Americans are getting exactly what they voted for.
ralusek 7y ago
A socialist revolution? Do you mean that you'd like the US to become more like Sweden, a social democracy? Because it bears repeating, there is not a single desirable place to live on Earth that is not primarily governed by free market forces, including Sweden. Sweden, Norway, Canada...these are not socialist states. Also, let's be clear about one more thing. Martin Shkreli is not a free market capitalist, he's a crony. Leveraging state patent systems to create abusive monopolies is not free market capitalism, that is textbook crony capitalism and the enemy of a free market. Without arbitrary state enforcement of medical patents on insulin and epipens, do you think that these would be exceedingly expensive items? Are you being bankrupted by Benadryl? Hardly. There are absolutely elements of healthcare that are far better serviced by a command economy than a free market, and I think the weird hybrid system in the US is the worst of both worlds in many such cases. But a socialist revolution? Socialism is an authoritarian nightmare that cannot suitably answer any question related to scarcity or competence.