Every soul from the time of birth to the end of life maintains a connotation because it stands a necessity to sustain vitality and thrive. To prevail over that journey, every living must work towards fulfilling that one purpose, that is, prosper. To thrive is beyond the scope of a simple word, as is an excursion with multitudes of influences, harsh moments, and unpredictability. Flourishing compels mastery- as a result since, not every person clasps all skills. Then one must trade abilities for something gainful in an allotted time and locale throughout that journey. The exchanges merely appear with the concept of an element. That one is clenching to have the right to; (be it a commodity or skill) the primacy, merit, or suitability compared to another property, so the value.
The indebtedness of real value relating to the tangible item or service is imperative, as is the driver of how much it would cost somebody who needs that aid or gadget. To infer the worth of something may have been pretentious in antiquity but is much more sophisticated nowadays. A handful may concur as we are living in a world of financial bubble overblown by economic rent, but most folks probably oblivious of its validity. For that cause, I would favor to metaphorically associate our life voyage to that of the Apple market. Once we have embellished, we should be able to relate this intuition to the different markets. For the sake of comparison and the fact that merely stands my space of aptitude, I would incline to expend the illustration as is relevant to the healthcare market.
A glance at the Apple market
Apple is a peculiar kind of fruit. It possesses a health benefit, as most of us are familiar with the prevailing notion;” one apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Also, its ancient spiritual significance goes back to Adam & Eve sharing the bite of an apple; or in technology is the brand of the famous computer.
Through time the Apple has amassed notoriety in a variety of ways. Some conceit of sociocultural circumstances transpired in the yore through the current juncture, but none would alter the truth, as is still a fruit. The demerit of profound knowledge, one may be under the speculation that such a vital alimentary element has gained scrutiny vastly from a human proprietor, so I call the fabrication of the denomination of identity. The new epoch brand is exercised to persuade missions among the citizens to maximize monetary gain plummeting somewhere within the spectrum of establishing identity, marketing, economic rent, and sure monopoly extortion.
Apple is still indeed a spheroidal fruit with upper fullness and slimmer underside. It comes in assorted shades of colors from red, golden yellow, green, and a combination of the above. Taste and Texture, as well as the bite-size, provides uniqueness to each of its kinds. Every distinctive character of Apple’ subsists a part wielded to conform to every consumer’s desires.
According to an online source, 7,500 varieties of apples exist throughout the world, of which the United States grows 2500 varieties of them. However, only one hundred variations of the latter are commercially available within the United States.
The sufficient justification subsists as why not every apple makes its way into the market. No demand for the rest of the 2400 variations points to the fact that the competitor miscellany will ratify which apple variety must vend under the rationale of- as long as one doesn’t bite an apple, he or she won’t have to crave it. I like sour red apple, but I have never been able to find one in the U.S. market. The limit of variation of species and choice will restrict the rivalry; hence will cultivate a shortcut for those who deliver one or two classes of Apple, meaning; exclusive discretion over the market by way of, hampering options, impeding quality, and cultivating economic rent.
The cost of Apple is noteworthy, as it must be inexpensive, reasonably traded thru time before it spoils. The value and cost yet depend on quality, availability, and necessity.
In reality, the quality of Apple doesn’t principally bank on the variety of the available types of Apples; but also depend on buyer’s inclination encompassing Taste, Looks, Freshness, and Size, aroma, and season of crop, Texture, and shape. The vicinity of wherever an apple tree remained seeded, cared to, including planted impacts all the above, untold of enormities. Hence, The Nourishing facts of apple by the ingredient of the minerals available in their respective soil are of noteworthy. Health benefits, Ripeness at the time of the bargain, whether Organic or genetically modified, are similarly critical in inferring the quality. Contemplating all the criteria is convened at a lent period and demand; foremost, so the course of Supply and demand for Apple would be painstaking as a vital contributor to its excellence. If the order is high, then the farmers will be motivated to draw more and Supply to satisfy the market. Over time the intermediaries cropped up as wholesale brokers who would appoint a separate species of Apple to endorse to the grocery stores. Within the process, they furnace alliance with the client recognized, contracted the rock-bottom of the prearranged stock from selected agriculturists. To keep the market engrossed, the intermediary would build a close relationship with the buyers, sellers, and competitors daunting the apple distribution logistics. Once successful accomplishing, the latter would limit payroll obligation by facilitating elected growers and banks delving others, not to mention the monopoly of water supply and scheming the essential farming resources, such as fertilizer, pesticide, and genetic processing through association with respective scientific as well as Industry realms.
Marketing a handful of apple categories will sell limit of species type.
The end yield is the composure of pricing through a kickback, lobbying, and behind scene business deals. Hence, affecting quality, artificially deterring the value, price, and head of all overseeing the job market. Evocative to concede the implication of farming industry monopoly not only de-incentivizes the domestic job market; but also encourages the employment of illegal immigrants, who are inclined to work harder for lower wages; without intermediary commitment while they are taking advantage of the circumstances. Net market neutrality is not what the key players of monopoly desire because it hinders supremacy over the product supply and demand. The hormones aid in maximizing the vertical productivity by means of the loftier Supply of already restricted varieties of apples to the community at all times, that is in reflection to horizontal production where all types of apples to everyone by farmers who have incentives by Way of the unbiased Competition and objective, which, consecutively, will engage in more explicit independently owned logistics to haul the harvest to stores.
The practical Factors entailing the value of Apple are Quality, customers buying power, and logistics available to take the Apple from the farm to the customer. The Personal taste of apple; Seller’s sentiment towards the particular brand; Middleman’s Way of assigning price is steering every facet of the Apple production from fertilizer and water; to the negotiating table and shopper appetite. They also adopt Kickback practices capitalizing on other entities’ involvement in fertilizers, pesticides, environmentalists and, etc., hence circumventing all the fundamental elements of free and the closed market principal. Intermediaries are effortlessly able to thwart the growers call through the upkeep of scarce Transparency, organizing unions, and lobbying administration, thus maintaining fierce discretion on pesticides, water supply, fertilizer, cost control.
The governments have historically inculcated selective transparency contingent on each entity’s lobbying power. In addition to the later- Supply and demand are thwarted. The complete disinterestedness hs hampered the personal choice of apple.
The extra amount earned using resources such as land, capital, or labor; by making use of alternative course of action from what initially conveyed by definite tactical undertone; for Economic rent built for the Apple market. Latter has lost its dominant role within the transaction as being a byproduct of the trade pact between the large entities. Such interventions have translated into a set of measures letting out, for instance, the city of X all get the green apple and under officialdoms set rate.
Instead of creating Transparency and accountability at the grassroots, politicians have created other statutes with loopholes, foremost accessible to specific institutions.
Values are not customary based on individual drivers of the crop but over the negotiated products prioritized under the cooperation table. The cost of an apple today is by no means the introspection of quota, demand, and quality of apple is the reflection of the objective to avert Competition through shortcuts. The same try to legitimize their deeds of deception beneath- work smart not hard, but I hail as “working crookedly smart not robustly creative, besides hard”
Let’s span some of the cases!
A manuscript published by Elain Schwartz in 2015 in Econlife illustrates, an organic Red Delicious apples were about $2.50 a pound while Honeycrisps $5.23. The price disparity came across to be all about a trademark; because both are a variation of the same tree. According to the article, the traditional price of Apple has been the property of meticulous Competition by Way of growers developed comparable fruits, overseeing the market, adjusting the cost. Once the Honeycrisp offered growers some product differentiation, they shifted to the privilege of the robust market arrangement continuum of monopolistic pursuit by patenting the seed and massive marketing campaigns. By way of building a trademark, Honeycrisp agriculturist secured price control.
In 2009 The University of Minnesota cultivated a new apple strain, the Sweetango, the inheritor of the popular Honeycrisp. The University via an “exclusive agreement” with Pepin Heights, the state’s largest apple grower, was able to harness the Dassel Hillside Farm grower, which since 1982 was a long-standing roadside market at Townsend, Minnesota. The independent apple farmers weren’t pleased with the exclusivity of the treaty between the academy and the giant southern Minnesota grower. It is also worthwhile speaking of the old administration statute, the Capper–Volstead Act (P.L. 67-146) (also called the Magna Carta of cooperatives) that was initially adopted by the United States Congress on February 18, 1922. The enactment is about protecting “farmers associations with the safe harbor from antitrust laws.
How does this apply to medicine and healthcare?
For the sake of contention, let’s replace Apple with the medical services (X, Y, etc.), logistics with technology and data, Customers with the patients and suppliers with doctors and providers. And allow us to compare Vertical artificially inflated prices and values of production against the horizontal Individual free-market attributes. As you may glimpse, the complex interrelationships and murkiness of the economic waters confer a competitive climate for corporations and other assemblages to govern the market demand, thus downplaying the True Value of subjective preferences and increasing the size of bureaucracy and unilateral interventionism.
The closed market strategy under one hundred percent government terms, chimes inexpensive, hence convenient but unless closed is committed at a minor scale and through secure and transparent channels with the understanding of the populace, it will ultimately stop to work due to pseudo-tunnel vision policies of seeing no evil, hear no evil.
People contend correlating medical service to commodity is unfoundedly provided its sophistication and immersion with human life. The intricacy is a logistic driver by which a particular service is distributed or a product delivered to the recipients. For instance, an apple could exemplify a vaccination, and a variety of apples may well represent a variant of the associated generic vaccine. Or; the discrepancy between the red; and the green apple, denoting two different treatment alternatives by individual doctors on the same patient. To further expand- the elements involving fertilizer, pesticide, etc. resemble the technology, resources, and drugs; healthcare delivery system; and diagnostic facets in the industry. No doubt in my mind, every other sector is likewise affected by the “pseudo-Apple phenomenon” of Top-down influence of patronage, economy, labor, as well as scholastic enterprises. Also, Imperative to comprehend that the concept of Magna Carta has been frequently applied to today’s healthcare by ensuring a safe harbor for pharmacy benefit management organizations (PBM). Or involvement of coalition factions and associations misuse of power towards pivoting their mission through strategizing unheeded other schemata, like the value-based compensation using purely manufactured social determinants that plop the doctors and patient devotion at the mercy of fiscal opportunists.
Between the line
If put up with a moment and analyze every scenario individually, within its context, we may conclude that the market trend throughout the past decades has been the upshot of the Competition, creativity, Supply, demand, and innovations along with administrative intervention to maximize productivity and reducing expenses. In the mainstream of the schemes, it may even come across that way. Yet untenably, what we are experiencing is the consequence of policies targeted to reach a fiscal ambition, irrespective of its original tactical layout. That means, in a tactical conception, the process of producing a category of apple and delivering to the customer entails sequences of events from planting the tree to lying on the grocery shelves while making a modest profit. Instead, the course was strategically diversified to generate fiscal profit. Within the process, Apple is also delivered to the store racks, keeping the price theatrically conserved at a predetermined rate by those clenching the strings within the system.
The fact
Like the apple husbandry trade or other markets, the healthcare system has been bugged with the corruption and legal extortion. Those clutching the upper hand justify their approaches to give dividends before making sure physicians can offer the proper care to their patients, just like the Apple tale. Once more, when stuck, the trusting would reach out to the political mongers and those who follow cookie-cutter protocols to solve a well-designed, interrelated, flexible scheme with well-drilled loopholes made by their predecessors in the first place. The kind of rules that makes sure to victimize individuals by endowing communal of elites. Paying high for something or someone, that, in actuality, may not have the same worthiness, hence of the economic rent. A halfway regulated market, by no means, refers to an optimally accountable business bargain.
What we discern today is a controlled market for patients and physicians, on the other hand, vastly open broad prospects for entities and associations; and depersonalization of a person and personification of organizational forces.
Solution
The solution rests within the grassroots, by empowering individuals, broadening balanced admission to every aspect of the market to everyone, as a result of developing logistics to leverage equal opportunity, while instituting Transparency across the diverse free market. It’s crucial to solidify intelligibility to all traits of the industry dominion from jerk to logistics; and to the finish, thence guaranteeing precision accountability. We must depersonalize entities, reinstate individual identity, ease collaborative undertaking via own independent participation, keep merger and consolidation size limited, and ahead of all stay vigilant for the disastrous disposition of economic rent.
