Item — HN Reader

The device itself probably cost $50 to manufacture, but it's a medical device which is strictly regulated. You're also paying for the additional quality control, the regulatory approval, the post-market surveillance studies etc. There is a lot of legally required overhead when you do business in regulated industries. Some of it necessary, other things maybe not so much. It will be interesting to see if DOGE/Musk/Trump will actually change any of this.

Agreed about the absurdity of the Tylenol though.

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https://a.co/d/63gQ3Kl

I sympathize with strict regulation but the market sells the exact same “medical device” at much lower cost and my point stands - there is no option to pay market price for a breast pump instead of the insurance hiked price, regardless of whether it is a 3rd party pocketing the margin or if the margin is the cost of additional regulation.

Agreed!

Why on Earth would reducing regulatory overhead decrease medical device/drug costs? That would only be the case if competition had already driven costs down as much as possible and margins were thin. If companies are currently able to charge high margins and their costs are lowered why would they choose to pass on any savings to buyers? Surely they would just maintain their prices and capture more profit.

To be honest I didn't think about the price changes. Having been in the medical devices industry I'm just curious if the regulations are actually going to change.