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Comment by RA_Fisher | Hacker News Reader

Accessibility broadens as waste is eliminated from the system. No other manner increases accessibility. Medical device manufacturers would prefer to make a device with less waste, they'd make more money (see empires built on low price commodities). Regulation unfortunately builds in tremendous waste and reduces accessibility. A waste reduction like this is an incredible achievement.

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Medical device manufacturers would prefer to make a device with less waste, they'd make more money (see empires built on low price commodities).

This seems like an oversimplification. The people capturing those gains are very often not the manufacturers. Often it's the retailers, not the manufacturers, who build those empires.

Unless it's different specifically in the medical device industry; if so, do you have examples?

The medical device industry (at least in the US) is very special. It does not have retailers per se, but there are a lot of middlemen who take varying, often enormous cuts. Medical device manufacturers make enormous amounts of money though. I am not sure how much of this is specific to the internal US market vs. carries over to US exports.

For a good treatment of this and many other aspects of US healthcare costs, see An American Sickness by Elisabeth Rosenthal.

But are there examples of medical device manufacturers making a killing by selling low price commodities?

I suspect that the manufacturing costs for many medical devices are quite low, e.g. stints, but this is not public data to my knowledge. But the manufacturers make a killing because they charge a high price.

Of course the medical manufacturers do well, they're granted monopoly power from the government through the regulatory process.

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