5% Electronic Fee: Millions Netted by Middlemen from Patients Payment to Doctors

Before Uber you still had cabs that took you from place to place. The difference was you probably had to call them in advance of hail them on a street. But for slightly more convenience, you’re now paying somewhere well above 30-40% to a middleman.

Same with food pickup. Restaurants have to pay Grubhub 30-40% even for orders that are placed for pickup. Even if that’s not the case, their prices are adjusted to cover delivery through these apps and most restaurants tend to keep the same price for deliver, pick-up and in person dining. So pretty much all restaurant food now contains a 30-40% tax paid to middlemen.

The same is true for shopping on Amazon. I used to be able to search on Amazon and the top 10 results would pay Amazon a service fee if I bought from any of them. Today, the top 10 results are all sponsored ads, so they all pay a service fee for the actual purchase, but they also pay an additional middle man fee to basically be listed anywhere decent on Amazon’s results. Which is nothing more than a middle man tax for no benefit (in fact, the customer is worse off due to the lower quality of results).