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Wheelchair users have no bargaining power against wheelchair makers. Car buyers have leverage. Normally this exorbitant price would incentivize competition in
by VHRanger 2y ago
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.
- ptero 2y agoI suspect in the US the lack of competition is due to regulation and liability, not VCs.
- makmanalp 2y agoIsn't the auto industry notoriously jam packed with regulation?
- TkTech 2y 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 2y agoSame for Kia and Hyundai being able to sell cars with compromised security. Something other countries regulate.
- SllX 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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.
- WalterBright 2y agoThe schools' poor performance relative to private schools is a strong signal of lack of accountability. Another signal is the firing of teachers for incompetence is practically non-existent. A third signal is anytime someone from the school talks about solving issues, they always always always put it down to lack of funding, and the credulous journalists repeat that unquestioningly and the schools get their tax increase. A fourth signal is repeatedly lowering the requirements for a diploma. A fifth signal is getting rid of "high stakes testing". A sixth is getting rid of the gifted tracks.
- akira2501 2y 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 2y agoIt’s the natural end result of the consumer price standard for antitrust
- sgregnt 2y agoOnly in the industries, where the government is involved.
- akira2501 2y agoThere have been recent monopolization plays on cheer leading, on diving schools, and grocery stores. This is not a polite machine with boundaries.
- WorkerBee28474 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y agoPerhaps the wheelchair is considered a medical device and therefore has to go through more expensive safety tests and/or liability insurance?