Generally, Americans consider price-fixing a bad thing. Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890 to prevent it. Monopolies tend to concentrate business wealth among a few, trapping economic resources in concentrated pools long considered injurious to the general public. Capitalism works best in an open and free market.

Lack of competition stagnates markets and destroys the kind of individual vision and drive that fueled, for example, Benjamin Franklin, Virginia Apgar, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Jonas Salk—and countless other inventors, healers, thinkers and investors who helped make America a light to the world and an economic powerhouse.

Now American hospitals, apparently, often maintain monopolies, whether regional, or in medical specialties like cancer treatment (Sloan Kettering, MD Anderson).

In the longest single-author story ever run by Time magazine, American Lawyer founder Steven Brill in February concluded that one of the biggest problems plaguing U.S. healthcare is its failure to control rates, or hospital price-fixing, as it were.