Category Archives: Market BS

FREE MARKET COMPETITION IS YOUR FRIEND

Last year, I wrote that price competition between Wal-Mart and its rivals was a boon for pharmacy customers. Well, according to MarketWatch, the free market continues to work its magic:
In another expansion of its prescription drug program that has helped to increase its pharmacy sales, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said it’s adding a 90-day supply of […]

THE FREE MARKET TRIUMPHS YET AGAIN

The WSJ Health Blog notes that Wal-Mart has saved its customers more than $1 billion with its $4 generics program:
Wal-Mart’s doing a bit of chest thumping this morning, claiming that its $4 generics program has saved consumers $1 billion — $1,032,573,012.61 as of March 10, to be precise.
These savings were brought about not by government cost […]

THE RHC: A MONSTER CREATED BY GOV’T MEDDLING

At first glance, retail health clinics look like a classic “lower-end” disruptive innovation—a medical delivery model that caters to a segment of the market that has been inadequately served by the traditional delivery model. But the RHC phenomenon isn’t really a response to normal market forces. It’s a reaction to perverse incentives created by government price controls.
CMS payment reductions for primary care services have created […]

WHY CAN’T I SELL MY KIDNEY?

I can always use an extra $30 or $40 thousand. So why can’t I put my left kidney up for sale on eBay? Well, as John Stossel explains in this op-ed, Al Gore and his accomplices in Congress made it a federal crime:
In 1984, U.S. Rep. Al Gore sponsored a law making the sale of organs […]

TRANSPLANTS AND TEARS

The two are irrevocably tied together. That sad reality has been largely ignored in the hysteria surrounding the Nataline Sarkisyan case. Because there aren’t enough organs to go around, every patient receiving one has several counterparts who won’t. And these counterparts will die.
Remember, back in Econ 101, when the professor droned on and on about “opportunity cost”? […]

SOCIAL JUSTICE? TRY THE FREE MARKET

Kevin, MD links to a lively debate between Graham and Panda, now joined by California Medicine Man and Medskool, about the merits and meaning of social justice. Graham believes that Panda doesn’t understand the concept, so he offers the following:
Social justice, as I understand, is about equality. Distributing shared, scarce public resources as equitably as possible.
But that […]