[alexbecker]

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.

[icebraining]

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

[alexbecker]

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.

[RA_Fisher]

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