Is price-gouging legal? (credit card, companies, money, income)

[JL]

Btw, if you have a medical bill, you can always negotiate. Just tell them what you can pay per month and they have no choice but to accept if they want their money.

[TwoByFour]

Originally Posted by tickyul

Go to Ebay and check prices on things like Purell and N95-masks............price-gouging
or a hysteria-tax?!?!?!

Whatever you want to call it, it is just supply and demand which has a way of distributing the product to more people. If masks sold for pennies, there would none left for anyone to buy. So which is worse, no masks because they all got snatched up immediately, or some masks at very high prices?

[beachmouse]

Originally Posted by TaxPhd

Care to guess how long it will be before none of those items are available in Florida at any price? If anything really comes out of the Corona virus scare, it will be a very short time indeed.

Like with hurricanes, stores and suppliers will do their best to keep pushing inventory into impacted areas because they can still make a decent to good profit at the original posted prices. And those thinking beyond the next reporting quarter also know the value of customer loyalty. One of the reasons why Publix kills other grocery stores down here is that people know Publix will reopen and restock quickly after hurricanes and can otherwise be trusted to do the right thing in a disaster.

[TaxPhd]

Originally Posted by beachmouse

Like with hurricanes, stores and suppliers will do their best to keep pushing inventory into impacted areas because they can still make a decent to good profit at the original posted prices. And those thinking beyond the next reporting quarter also know the value of customer loyalty. One of the reasons why Publix kills other grocery stores down here is that people know Publix will reopen and restock quickly after hurricanes and can otherwise be trusted to do the right thing in a disaster.

With hurricanes, things like gasoline, generators, bottled water, and plywood nearly always sell out and are simply not available at any price when anti "price gouging" laws are in effect. Stores don't "push inventory" there, because they can't, at least not in the short run which is when it matters.


Anti "price gouging" laws are the result of politicians being too stupid to understand the underlying economics, or they do in fact understand it, know that the laws are incredibly stupid, but do it to pander to their uneducated constituency.

[City Guy997S]

Originally Posted by blueherons

Funny you mentioned this.

My friend's husband is a partner in a tax law firm. He's a tax attorney and mostly what he works with are hospitals.

Did you know that for every five beds in a hospital, only three pay?

Hospitals are a business. They have to be able to operate even with the deadbeats.

and "I think" they can't turn away sick/injured people

So that would be like owning a restaurant and you have to serve someone even if they can't pay but they are hungry!

[k7baixo]

Originally Posted by Bubble99

We don't have planned economy or fixed price of any thing.


Just go to any store and you see it not fixed price and they are not in jail.


Yes be it food or electronics. Like one stores have pop and chips for $2, other $3, other $6
they do that all the time.

Go buy LG TV model XX at one store for $700 and other store for $850

Thay are not in jail.

I think the only time when they trying to sale some thing to sick people. There was talk about going after people to try sale face mask to stop virus and trying to get rich of this virus.

So people using this virus to get rich and that is what you are probably hearing.

Originally Posted by Bubble99

Also you have to understand the US spend more on healthcare than any country in the world but lot of the problem is there is only a handful of healthcare providers in the US.


And healthcare cost is going up exponentially in the US every year.

Do you ever read what you actually write?

First, people aren't getting rich off of the virus. They're making a few bucks taking advantage of a temporary glitch in the supply chain by people's drastic changes in buying habits driven by fear, founded or otherwise. No one is holding a gun to their head.

And healthcare costs going up "exponentially"? I don't think the word means what you may think it means.

[k7baixo]

Originally Posted by TaxPhd

With hurricanes, things like gasoline, generators, bottled water, and plywood nearly always sell out and are simply not available at any price when anti "price gouging" laws are in effect. Stores don't "push inventory" there, because they can't, at least not in the short run which is when it matters.


Anti "price gouging" laws are the result of politicians being too stupid to understand the underlying economics, or they do in fact understand it, know that the laws are incredibly stupid, but do it to pander to their uneducated constituency.

This.

Generators are always in short supply during major events. If a guy can purchase a load from his local Home Dept in Oklahoma City, drive them down to FL and sell them at whatever price, why is that gouging? Who is to judge what his time and effort is worth? Who is going to supply them if he doesn't?

Yeah - let's wait on the government to make it all better.

Someday.

Still waiting? How's that war on drugs going? The war on poverty? The war on the cost of higher education?

[markg91359]

Originally Posted by TaxPhd

With hurricanes, things like gasoline, generators, bottled water, and plywood nearly always sell out and are simply not available at any price when anti "price gouging" laws are in effect. Stores don't "push inventory" there, because they can't, at least not in the short run which is when it matters.


Anti "price gouging" laws are the result of politicians being too stupid to understand the underlying economics, or they do in fact understand it, know that the laws are incredibly stupid, but do it to pander to their uneducated constituency.

Anti-gouging laws are a remnant of the days when there was a certain level of civilization in this country. Back than people actually thought that everyone--or at least as many people as possible--should not be denied food, water, shelter, and medicine.

Sadly, many just don't care any more.

I understand certain items "sell out" in a store and are hard to replace. Still, I admire the stores that limit purchases of necessity items like baby formula, bottled water, and medical supplies to a certain number per customer. Its called: Acting in the public interest. There is too little of that these days.

[Mircea]

Originally Posted by Cida

The issue has occasionally come up in the news when a local company has hiked prices during a disaster.

But I was thinking of it now in terms of this article about hospital charges. For instance, as this author says, charging "$20 for a pill that costs pennies at a pharmacy." We all expect a reasonable mark-up. But is there some point when it becomes illegal, especially when they're taking advantage of a captive clientele?

It's perfectly legal for hospitals to price-gouge because your State legislature has made it so.

You don't have a Free Market in medical care.

State laws allow hospitals to operate as monopolies and monopolistic cartels.

When the American Hospital Association bribed, uh, sorry, lobbied your State legislatures to grant them monopoly power, they did so under the guise that the free healthcare offered to low-income patients would offset the negative economic effects of monopoly.

So, question, exactly how much free healthcare do hospitals provide annually for low-income patients?

That, in fact, is a trick question, because neither you nor anyone else in the US knows.

When the American Hospital Association wrote the legislation granting their hospitals monopoly power, they made absolutely certain that the Bill contained no reporting requirements whatsoever.

The law does not require hospitals to file reports with county or State governments at any time showing how much free healthcare was provided.

But, you're right and that's why I refuse to donate blood.

We have the Hoxworth Blood Center here. They want you to donate.

Last time I checked, Hoxworth sells the blood to hospitals for $786/pint.

The hospital then sells it back to you for $3,000 or $5,000 or $10,000 or whatever they feel like charging you.

You can sell your blood here. Places will pay you $45-$65/pint, and they sell it for over $700 (but I don't know the exact amount).

Then the hospital sells it back to you for $3,000 or $5,000 or $10,000 or whatever they feel like charging you.

That's what hospitals do: Throw spaghetti at the wall to see if it sticks. Here's a good real world example: Wills v Foster 229 Ill. 2d 393 (2008)

The plaintiff owed $80,163 in medical bills but the hospital accepted an insurance company negotiated settlement of $19,005 in full satisfaction.

Let's be clear on the concept here.

The hospital billed $80,163, not the insurance company.

The insurance company is the hero here, because they did a tremendous favor to everyone by negotiating a settlement of $19,005.

I can literally show you Millions of cases just like that.

That's an everyday occurrence all over the US. Hospital bills $140,000 and insurance settles for $60,000. Hospital bills $32,000 and insurances settles for $11,000. Hospital bills $280,000 and insurance settles for $94,000.

In terms of Economics, there are three models of healthcare delivery:

1) the Hospital Model
2) the Clinic Model
3) the Policlinic Model

The Euro-States that everyone is gaga about do not use the Hospital Model. They abandoned it because it's antiquated and obsolete and the most ineffective most costly method of healthcare delivery.

Child-birth where I am is about $9,200. In a Euro-style birthing clinic it would cost $2,300.

A higher level of care at 1/3rd the price.

The morons who keep screaming "Universal Healthcare" don't understand that Euro-States spend less in part because they do not use the Hospital Model.

Hospital Administrators are like Medieval Roman Catholic Bishops. They built gigantic behemoth cathedrals as a monument to the god-thing.

Hospital Administrators build gigantic behemoth hospitals as monuments to themselves.

You need to put an end to that.

Sadly, Americans are too politically lazy to demand that their State legislators repeal the laws that allow them to be screwed in hospital.

[Threestep2]

Originally Posted by k7baixo

This.

Generators are always in short supply during major events. If a guy can purchase a load from his local Home Dept in Oklahoma City, drive them down to FL and sell them at whatever price, why is that gouging? Who is to judge what his time and effort is worth? Who is going to supply them if he doesn't?

Yeah - let's wait on the government to make it all better.

Someday.

Still waiting? How's that war on drugs going? The war on poverty? The war on the cost of higher education?

Have you ever lived in a hurricane/tornado/blizzard devastated area with no power/water? Greed has limits at least in my book.


SO volunteered to work air bridges the day Katrina hit and from then on. When he told me a bout a "conversation" with someone who was selling generators in a parking lot a few days later and a young couple with a little person was quietly crunching numbers until he stepped in, negotiated a reasonable profit for the seller and bought the thing for them - it was not money we had to give away. Several of our gasoline generators went places for a smile. Enjoy your profit but remember it will come back threefold.