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Really cool that an electric wheelchair costs more than a luxury EV and is somehow less reliable.
by cogman10 3y ago
Really cool that an electric wheelchair costs more than a luxury EV and is somehow less reliable.
- loceng 3y agoReminds me of the military industrial complex.
- Eggs-n-Jakey 3y agoYa this reminded my of a Palmer Lucky interview where he explained how the prices are created. Can't remember off the top of my head but there was substantial incentive to build with the most expensive materials, doesn't seem like the case here though.
- Spivak 3y agoFrom a friend who is a Navy engineer this is apparently on purpose is done as a form of economic stimulus. Overpay 10x for things to support the local economy around the base.
- VHRanger 3y agoWheelchair 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.
- ptero 3y agoI suspect in the US the lack of competition is due to regulation and liability, not VCs.
- makmanalp 3y agoIsn't the auto industry notoriously jam packed with regulation?
- TkTech 3y agoWeirdly, 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.
- evilduck 3y agoSame for Kia and Hyundai being able to sell cars with compromised security. Something other countries regulate.
- SllX 3y agoIt’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.
- readams 3y agoYou also need the unreasonable barriers to entry for the scam to work. Otherwise new entrants would still drive down the price. So the FDA is doing its part to keep prices high.
- SllX 3y agoIn terms of everything keeping health care costs sky high, you are correct. What I outlined is the tip of the iceberg, if the iceberg was Antarctica.
- WalterBright 3y agoConsider the public schools. You have the customer (the students), the buyers (the taxpayers) and the service provider (the teachers), which are accountable to neither.
- tombert 3y agoDefine "accountable"? If a teacher does something awful to a student (e.g. sexually harass them), a taxpayer-funded entity (the school board, the police, or the courts depending on the severity and what happend) will reprimand the teacher. With something less egregious like "giving a the students a bad education", we still have some level of accountability based on standardized testing and school funding. Standardized testing is far from perfect, and it can be an example of Goodhart's Law, but it's still accountability.
- 3y ago
- akira2501 3y agoThere have been a lot of acquisitions and rollups in this space. We have regulations against this, but they are not enforced, and the VCs have the money to push through this layer anyways. It's both. The US lacks serious competition in _most_ of it's industries right now.
- notfromhere 3y agoIt’s the natural end result of the consumer price standard for antitrust
- sgregnt 3y agoOnly in the industries, where the government is involved.
- akira2501 3y agoThere have been recent monopolization plays on cheer leading, on diving schools, and grocery stores. This is not a polite machine with boundaries.
- WorkerBee28474 3y ago> but the private equity players presumably make that difficult There's no reason to think this is true. Unless the barrier to market entry is access to huge amounts of capital, it should be no different than if the entire space owned by mom and pop shops.
- cjalmeida 3y agoPE shops are great targets for being the “bad guys” in whatever situation, of course they are no different than your run of the mill investor or founder when it comes to greed.
- raincole 3y agoI'm feeling it's not the full story here. Presumably it shouldn't be extremely hard to produce a wheelchair, right? So why aren't there more people trying to get in this business?
- harimau777 3y agoPerhaps the wheelchair is considered a medical device and therefore has to go through more expensive safety tests and/or liability insurance?
- wolverine876 3y agoIt's not surprising that a nearly bespoke vehicle would cost more than, and be less reliable than, a mass produced one. Just think of the engineering resources invested in the two vehicles and in their manufacturing processes.