[tpeo]

>This is the inverse of the anti-marketplace argument that capitalism leads to monopolies

I don't think I have heard such an argument, and I understand the parent comment just fine.

What he means is that, since pharmaceutical and medical supplies companies have large upfront research costs coupled with negligible marginal costs, they face a falling average-cost curve. However, a firm operating under competition has it output at the point where marginal and average costs are equal. The point is that for a firm who profits off research, reaching this point is unfeasible. What all this economic gobbledygook is that, in order to survive, firms have to charge above what would be otherwise the "warranted" price (like the price of the components and labor that go into a kit).

This is more obvious in the case of software, since the cost of copying any piece of software is pretty much zero, anyone trying to sell it for it's marginal price won't ever get what he put in by having written it in the first place. In such markets the socially efficient outcome, the one which makes both consumer and producer better off, is actually to have a single or few firms regulated firms operating under imperfect competition. And all this happens because of the cost structure of the firms, not because of the market itself.

Though I'm rather skeptic that pressing on the suppliers will push them near their marginal costs in this particular case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_curve