Patients Versus Shareholders

  • There is a critical distinction between market friendly and business friendly deregulation but this is almost never made, with sometimes terrible consequences.
  • Perhaps the best example of the latter is the US healthcare system, where insiders rule and investors rejoice, but at the expense of patients and the rest of the economy.Investors often benefit from business friendly policies as they can limit competition confer market power to companies enabling them to generate higher returns.
  • This should shock free-marketeers and open their eyes to the fact that markets sometimes malfunction.
  • Where they do, deregulation tends to generate business friendly outcomes, but not market friendly ones.

Source: Patients Versus Shareholders | Seeking Alpha