Imagine you run an independent coffee shop in a small town somewhere in America. Then moves in Starbucks and Dunkin’. After a while, you and the other small independent coffee shops might merge in order to survive, and that’s ok. American capitalism often features large businesses with economies of scale (the dynamic whereby a bigger and more productive company can swamp a smaller and less productive one) competing against single enterprises. Sometimes, that leads the single firms to merge in order to more effectively take on the big guys. In the end, the consumer usually wins as a result of all this healthy competition. The only thing that screws this up is the government trying to “help.”
This exact dynamic is happening all across the country today but in the business of hospitals and not coffee shops. Covid restrictions on the federal, state, and local levels have caused hospitals of all sizes to put off non-emergency medical procedures “for the duration” (how long that takes is anyone’s guess). These surgeries and other hospital events are how the industry makes money. If they cannot schedule these procedures, or enough of them, they cannot bring in enough money to pay the staff, buy the equipment, or keep the lights on.
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