Ummm, now that I had time to visualize at macroeconomic level, simple cap at each middleman's transactional behooves the supply chain to conspire on price-fixin

Ummm, now that I had time to visualize at macroeconomic level, simple cap at each middleman's transactional behooves the supply chain to conspire on price-fixing just to feed and assist all the middlemen down the line to the patient, as you've asserted. To introduce inter-middleman fighting ensues between favorable price and lower price... Fixing at 1% total for each step along the way doesn't work because one can just add even more middlemen. Fixed 2% price, over entire chain: A competing supplier can easily undercut that downstream conspiratorial bloat.