<story><title>Congress is set to ban most surprise medical bills</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/20/upshot/surprise-medical-bills-congress-ban.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gregario</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s the regulations &amp;#x2F; limitations you are proposing that make it possible&amp;#x2F;likely that a monopoly will form. See Milton Friedman on this. There&amp;#x27;s basically no example of a monopoly forming outside of government regulation.</text></item><item><author>kstrauser</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve that this before, but I like my markets free as in GPL, not free as in BSD. That is, I want the markets themselves to be free, even if that means that participants in the market have limitations put on them to keep them from capturing the market, forming monopolies, etc.</text></item><item><author>iaw</author><text>&amp;gt; has turned me from a pure free market thinking into a believer in single payer healthcare&lt;p&gt;The current trend in &amp;#x27;free-market economics&amp;#x27; is to call captured markets free and then argue for the relatively lax regulation.&lt;p&gt;Most markets are not free markets and the healthcare definitely isn&amp;#x27;t.  There&amp;#x27;s very little true choice, participants are typically under duress when seeking expensive services, and prices are hidden.&lt;p&gt;If there was ala-carte transparent pricing and no insurer lockouts things may be a bit better.&lt;p&gt;My suspicion is that Private Equity has been funneled in healthcare for two decades intentionally distorting the market behaviors for increased profitability which is why the US has such excessive healthcare costs without any apparent justification.</text></item><item><author>jsperson</author><text>That it takes such effort to pass a bill like this - 80% public approval, banning a clearly predatory practice, has turned me from a pure free market thinking into a believer in single payer healthcare. The free market just doesn&amp;#x27;t work when there is very little elasticity in consumption. I&amp;#x27;ve been on the receiving end of a $15K air ambulance bill (thankfully covered by insurance) as well as the out of network specialist at an in-network hospital. The latter is particularly galling. What are you supposed to do, interrogate every person that comes in the room?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>uoaei</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s because there&amp;#x27;s basically no example of advanced economies that are not regulated by government. It&amp;#x27;s not the regulation that makes monopolies happen, it is that regulations only exist in markets which could support monopolies.</text></comment>
<story><title>Congress is set to ban most surprise medical bills</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/20/upshot/surprise-medical-bills-congress-ban.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gregario</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s the regulations &amp;#x2F; limitations you are proposing that make it possible&amp;#x2F;likely that a monopoly will form. See Milton Friedman on this. There&amp;#x27;s basically no example of a monopoly forming outside of government regulation.</text></item><item><author>kstrauser</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve that this before, but I like my markets free as in GPL, not free as in BSD. That is, I want the markets themselves to be free, even if that means that participants in the market have limitations put on them to keep them from capturing the market, forming monopolies, etc.</text></item><item><author>iaw</author><text>&amp;gt; has turned me from a pure free market thinking into a believer in single payer healthcare&lt;p&gt;The current trend in &amp;#x27;free-market economics&amp;#x27; is to call captured markets free and then argue for the relatively lax regulation.&lt;p&gt;Most markets are not free markets and the healthcare definitely isn&amp;#x27;t.  There&amp;#x27;s very little true choice, participants are typically under duress when seeking expensive services, and prices are hidden.&lt;p&gt;If there was ala-carte transparent pricing and no insurer lockouts things may be a bit better.&lt;p&gt;My suspicion is that Private Equity has been funneled in healthcare for two decades intentionally distorting the market behaviors for increased profitability which is why the US has such excessive healthcare costs without any apparent justification.</text></item><item><author>jsperson</author><text>That it takes such effort to pass a bill like this - 80% public approval, banning a clearly predatory practice, has turned me from a pure free market thinking into a believer in single payer healthcare. The free market just doesn&amp;#x27;t work when there is very little elasticity in consumption. I&amp;#x27;ve been on the receiving end of a $15K air ambulance bill (thankfully covered by insurance) as well as the out of network specialist at an in-network hospital. The latter is particularly galling. What are you supposed to do, interrogate every person that comes in the room?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>akiselev</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; There&amp;#x27;s basically no example of a monopoly forming outside of government regulation.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s tautological statement. There is no free market without private property protections which do not exist outside of government regulation either.</text></comment>