[AnthonyMouse]

Healthcare is cheaper in every country everywhere regardless of whether they have public or private coverage. This implies that the difference isn't public vs. private, it's some other regulatory differences which are driving up costs in the US.

[skhunted]

… it's some other regulatory differences which are driving up costs in the US.

It suggests regulatory capture and/or lack of proper governmental oversight.

[AnthonyMouse]

"Regulatory capture" is the regulations the people complaining about regulations are complaining about.

"Lack of government oversight" almost never leads to high consumer prices. It can lead to externalities, but if there are no regulations preventing anyone else from competing with the incumbents, it's very hard to sustain monopoly rents.

[skhunted]

Most people in the U.S. think regulations are bad in and of themselves. Regulations as a concept are the wrong target.

Lack of government oversight and regulations almost always leads, eventually, to cartel pricing and/or monopolistic type pricing.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Most people in the U.S. think regulations are bad in and of themselves. Regulations as a concept are the wrong target.

Regulations as a concept are the category of thing which is causing the problem. You then have to look into which specific regulations are contributing to the problem, but there are 10,000 of them. You can name some of them, like Certificate of Need laws, but that's just a representative example rather than an exhaustive list of every problematic regulation. So people say "regulations" or "inefficient regulations" because what else are they supposed to call them?

Hardly anybody thinks the ban on leaded gasoline is a bad regulation.

> Lack of government oversight and regulations almost always leads, eventually, to cartel pricing and/or monopolistic type pricing.

Only if you're specifically talking about lack of antitrust regulations, which is the exception rather than the rule in the overall category of regulations.

Most regulations simply increase costs. This is true whether they're good or bad. The ban on leaded gasoline increases the price of gasoline; lead is a cheaper stabilizer than what they use now. The ban on circumventing DRM increases the price of playback devices (or reduces quality at the same price); device makers have to pay to license the stupid DRM and it impairs competition by preventing anyone from making a device with features Hollywood doesn't like. But the ban on leaded gasoline is a good regulation because it's preventing a major externality, whereas the ban on circumventing DRM is a bad regulation because it doesn't do what it was sold as doing and instead is used by the studios to capture the market for playback devices.

Getting rid of bad regulations improves efficiency and lowers prices.

[skhunted]

We tried the no regulation method after the Civil War. It lead to robber barons and an overall shitty country. Regulations as in the concept is not the problem. Bad oversight and governance is.

[AnthonyMouse]

I honestly don't understand why someone can't say "we should get rid of these bad regulations which are causing problems" without someone hearing "we should get rid of all laws of any kind whatsoever".