But the victims don't have to pay for it -- excess infrastructure is a bad investment that those who built it pay for. The builders are not guaranteed a return on their investment.

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myrmidon 2 days ago | parent [-]

I don't really get it.

If you are arguing that the customer is not paying for inefficient providers, then I strongly disagree.

Customers always end up paying for inefficient supply chains. If you end up with an inefficient allocation of hospitals/doctors (local overprovisioning), it's always gonna be the patients that are gonna pick up the bill for this in the end through higher average prices.

Inefficiencies are doubly bad because you potentially don't just pay the pure cost for the inefficiency (middlemen, waste etc.) you even pay for margins on top.

I think the assumption that such inefficiencies could lead to actual savings for customers (by magically making the providers decrease their profit margins) is highly overoptimistic.

	▲	pfdietz an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> Customers always end up paying for inefficient supply chains. Obviously not. There is nothing that compels a customer to do business with an inferior competitor, if there is an alternative. The end result of having a sufficiently inefficient supply chain can be that the company involved goes out of business, as it cannot operate at a profit.