The Way of the Capitalist

When someone offers a product I want or need at a price that I am willing to pay, that is called capitalism. That is, the seller makes a decision on what product he wants to sell and at what price, and I make an informed, rational decision to purchase that product. If I don't like the price or the policies of the seller, then I can simply walk away and attempt to find a product elsewhere.

For quite a number of years, I have observed that a great deal of effort in the medical industry is going toward destroying the ability for consumers to spend their money in an informed and rational way.

Let me make a couple of definitions of things that are not illegal, but that are being used to extract money from people wanting to purchase medical items or care without their informed consent:

• SCAM - A scam is where you make someone believe that they are getting something that they are not. In my opinion, an example of a scam is Proactiv, a widely advertised range of quite expensive skin care products. These are advertised quite expertly as though they have some sort of magical powers of skin care. When I researched the active ingredients, I found that they indeed use chemicals that are commonly found to be effective. However, products with exactly the same ingredients are cheaply available from Rite-Aid and Walgreens. Indeed, Rite-Aid offers their own brand of products with a HIGHER percentage of the active ingredients (10% vs 2%) at about one fifth of the price. To further the scam, if you order from their 1-800 number using a credit card, WITHOUT TELLING YOU they automatically send you more product each month and, of course, bill your credit card each month. They make it REALLY hard to stop this automatic monthly subscription.
  
• STING - A sting is where you offer a product at one price, but when the bill actually comes, you are charged a slightly higher price. The difference is usually not enough for you to make a big stink about, but when you think about the total amount extra that is being extracted from hundreds, thousands, or perhaps even millions of consumers, it is not a good thing. I'm not talking about taxes here, but "other" charges.

Although the sting sounds less evil than the scam, I am not sure which is worse - they both prey on a person's ignorance; the sting often comes AFTER you can do anything about it, but the scam always makes me feel stupid when I fall for it.

I think that a good example of a sting is my Qwest telephone bill. In their ads and when I call to ask the price, my telephone line costs $14.88 per month. But, when the bill comes, the price is $26.15 per month, an $11.27 difference. The taxes are $2.89 of this difference, and the rest are stings like: "City Occupation" fee, "facility relocation cost recovery" fee, "federal access" charge, etc.

I believe that Comcast Cable TV is another sting, and indeed, it borders on a scam. They advertise a $33 per month price that sounds pretty good. But, unless you absolutely know what questions to ask, when the bill comes you are charged a monthly fee extra for a digital converter, a monthly fee extra for a remote control, etc. In addition, the $33 per month is a short-term come-on price, and very soon, the real price kicks in; however, in their ads, even the real price WITHOUT the converter, remote, and other extras is mentioned in the middle of a very large paragraph of type printed over a multi-color background in a type size that my old eyes just can't read. For my part, if I could make a rational, informed decision, I might decide that Comcast's product is worth it and subscribe, but the way they do it, I am completely unable to get a straight answer from them as to just exactly what the full monthly cost of their product will be, so I forget it.