this is not how prices work. consumers only pay the maximum they would be willing to pay for a good when there is only one provider. when there are multiple providers prices are pushed down to the cost of production. or so the theory goes.
* caveat: Assuming no power disparty between buyers and sellers.
If you need something more than the seller needs your money they're free to adjust the price up no matter how many of them there are. For instance, a hurricane comes in to town. All of a sudden, every gas station is charging $50/bottle for water and $10/gal for gas, even though the market is no more or less competitive than the day before when they charged $2.50. Externalities matter. Gouging like this is illegal in the event of bad weather but it's the status quo in the event of bad health, and much of the time, you exert equal control over both. The only real difference is one tends to skew acute and the other tends to skew chronic, I guess.
Sure I get the theory and I actually buy into it. However I’ve been on this earth long enough to know that theory doesn’t match reality a lot of the time and that’s when then the government should step in and right the scales.
