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nradovyesterday at 11:09 PM2 repliesview on HN

Price caps always and everywhere cause shortages, including long queues for certain types of care. This may be acceptable but we need to understand the trade-offs when making any changes.


Replies

mwwaterstoday at 12:49 AM

Electric utilities face price caps and there are not electricity shortages.

It depends on the level of market failure, but there are not a ton of hospitals to choose from regardless.

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mothballedyesterday at 11:22 PM

Price caps create shortages when they are the rate limiting factor, which is always the case when imposed on a free market whenever the cap is below the market price, so this is an extremely accurate statement when dealing with things like lightly regulated commodities.

Whether they would be the rate limiting factor in health care remain to be seen, since health care is highly regulated with regulatory capture, licensing, and violence enforced market manipulations. As a thought experiment, in the extreme that health care were a pure monopoly, then I could envision some price caps somewhere between cost and price where the supply curve is relatively flat on either side thus creating minimal effects to supply.

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