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What use are available masks if only a small portion of the population will buy them because of the cost? Now apply the same market logic to a future vaccine a

What use are available masks if only a small portion of the population will buy them because of the cost? Now apply the same market logic to a future vaccine and you'll have a situation where herd immunity will never be achieved because it won't be profitable to achieve it. Edit: It's even worse than the above though. Those that won't buy expensive masks/vaccines are also likely to be those most exposed/vulnerable to the disease in the first place. Then, when they're on death's door they will need much more expensive emergency care at the nearest hospital. Letting the market make these kinds of decisions is how the US achieves such dismal health outcomes despite spending a fortune on healthcare.

gruez 7y ago
> What use are available masks if only a small portion of the population will buy them because of the cost? What use are available masks if only a small portion of the population will have them because of their scarcity? In the short term, the amount of masks are the same. Pricing them higher doesn't magically cause masks to evaporate, and vendors aren't going to hoard masks when they can fetch a high price on the market. In the long term (when production ramps up in response to the increased price) the production of masks will increase, allowing more people in aggregate to have masks, even if it means that some portion of the population will be priced out. The alternative is that the supply of masks stay the same in the short term and long term, and the masks is randomly distributed (at best) or held in the hands of a small number of hoarders.
- AlexandrB 7y ago
  > The alternative is that the supply of masks stay the same in the short term and long term, and the masks is randomly distributed (at best) or held in the hands of a small number of hoarders. This is an utterly false dichotomy and a big reasons why government exists and is actually useful. Governments can do things (and compel others to do things) that don't fall in the optimal spot on the supply/demand curve. If supply is limited masks should not be "randomly" distributed, but distributing based on who can afford them is probably not any better than random in an epidemiological sense. Should the first people to get vaccinated be billionaires or health-care workers?
  - gruez 7y ago
    >If supply is limited masks should not be "randomly" distributed, but distributing based on who can afford them is probably not any better than random in an epidemiological sense. This appears to be a shifting of the goal posts. Your original comment remarked about how "Increasing prices on preventative medicine/devices is a great way to make sure fewer people use them", however now you seem to advocate for central allocation of medical resources. If the government is in charge of allocating resources, prices would be a moot point.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Yes, many people will buy more than they need. But without a forced price ceiling, fewer people will buy even more of them in order to profiteer off an emergency. The former is suboptimal, but still better than the latter.

gruez 7y ago

> What use are available masks if only a small portion of the population will buy them because of the cost? What use are available masks if only a small portion of the population will have them because of their scarcity? In the short term, the amount of masks are the same. Pricing them higher doesn't magically cause masks to evaporate, and vendors aren't going to hoard masks when they can fetch a high price on the market. In the long term (when production ramps up in response to the increased price) the production of masks will increase, allowing more people in aggregate to have masks, even if it means that some portion of the population will be priced out. The alternative is that the supply of masks stay the same in the short term and long term, and the masks is randomly distributed (at best) or held in the hands of a small number of hoarders.

AlexandrB 7y ago
> The alternative is that the supply of masks stay the same in the short term and long term, and the masks is randomly distributed (at best) or held in the hands of a small number of hoarders. This is an utterly false dichotomy and a big reasons why government exists and is actually useful. Governments can do things (and compel others to do things) that don't fall in the optimal spot on the supply/demand curve. If supply is limited masks should not be "randomly" distributed, but distributing based on who can afford them is probably not any better than random in an epidemiological sense. Should the first people to get vaccinated be billionaires or health-care workers?
- gruez 7y ago
  >If supply is limited masks should not be "randomly" distributed, but distributing based on who can afford them is probably not any better than random in an epidemiological sense. This appears to be a shifting of the goal posts. Your original comment remarked about how "Increasing prices on preventative medicine/devices is a great way to make sure fewer people use them", however now you seem to advocate for central allocation of medical resources. If the government is in charge of allocating resources, prices would be a moot point.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
Yes, many people will buy more than they need. But without a forced price ceiling, fewer people will buy even more of them in order to profiteer off an emergency. The former is suboptimal, but still better than the latter.