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Comment by throwaway_b04f | Hacker News Reader

Years ago I (and a handful of other folks) had a meeting with some people from American who were thinking about opening up their data via an API. One of the other attendees said something to the effect of, "software developers are very, very good at removing inefficiencies when given data like this." It was delicately phrased but the subtext was clearly a warning: if your business depends on asymmetry, an API can sink you. I guess they took that warning to heart.

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When you operate in a commodity business you want to impede the market's price discovery mechanism (in this case by making it harder for prices to be aggregated).

The same issue and battle is playing out for US healthcare as well due to the recent rule forcing hospitals to make prices public.

Opacity in price discovery as an objective in a commodity business is definitely an insightful framing of the issue.

Although the airline industry can be considered a commodity industry, the airline rewards miles industry is less so. What those miles can get you, can essentially change at any time if the airline says so.

This is true. Though one thing I've considered is that the front-end clients to the miles themselves have a balance of usability and inefficiency. They don't want everyone getting maximum dollar for their points. I would maybe so that giving data API access to the points tilts the $USD market price of what a point is worth in the favor of the consumer.

At the very least, data obfuscation obfuscates the shenanigans of a constantly asymmetrically redefined value store.

TPG just highlights the shenanigans which puts pressure on airlines to change the value even more frequently. This in turn makes the shenanigans more apparent which might call for regulation.

This lawsuit is attempting to nip this process in the bud before stumbling on regulation. But, fundamentally, the relationship is asymmetric regardless of any data api access.

While some parts of healthcare - like drugs - can be seen as commodity, a lot of it is not. Service differs significantly from doctor to doctor. Not disclosing the prices makes it easier for the providers to have higher prices but it doesn't make the service in question a commodity.

While surgery may not be a commodity, the same mechanisms of price discovery lowering prices across the board apply. Even if a surgeon is more skilled, are they worth 3x the cost?

A surgeon can easily be worth 3x the cost. Some surgeries have a significant risk of death, for instance. Or a low chance of success. Both of those factors may change dramatically with surgeon skill.

And those are no brainless. A more skilled surgeon on cosmetic surgery with lower recovery times and or prettier work could easily command a premium because their supply is so low and rich enough people have huge demand.

Definitely, but if I'm comparing primary care providers in the same area between Kaiser and Hoag and Sutter or other large chains there isn't going to be much difference in service between the pool of available doctors at each one. Or even routine specialists for non-critical stuff like dermatology, you don't get any better care by going with the best. Where it matters is cutting edge, critical care like cardiology, oncology, and surgery where methods aren't standardized and individual skill (as opposed to drug innovation) plays a large role in outcomes.

I'd guess most healthcare services are more like a commodity than not. (Also, to the extent that there is important variation in quality of service, it's probably the nursing staff that matters for the vast majority of services. I can't remember the last time I interacted with an actual MD for more than a few useless minutes.)

For some perspective: This isn’t just about friendly apps like TPG helping consumers out. If you have an API (or even just turn a blind eye to scraping) and have a popular service, scores of ill-intentioned business people will descend on your business to suck any value they can out of it.

This ranges from all of those StackOverflow scraping websites in your Google search results to companies that want to scrape Facebook for images and personal info to build a database of everyone.

And if I open the website in my browser and then copy from browser to my computer, then all is good?

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