The U.S. healthcare system exhibits the characteristics of an oligopoly due to the presence of a few dominant firms across various components, such as hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, insurance providers, and physicians' offices. These firms hold significant market power and often face high barriers to entry, which leads to limited competition. As a result, the decisions of one firm can have a considerable impact on the others, making the market interdependent. Additionally, these firms engage in non-price competition, such as advertising or product differentiation, to gain a competitive advantage. Due to the oligopolistic nature of the healthcare system, government regulations and scrutiny are necessary to ensure consumer safety, encourage innovation, and prevent collusion or other anti-competitive practices.

Choose one aspect of the U.S. healthcare system (hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, insurance providers, or physicians' offices) and address the following three parts of the question, analyzing the chosen component as an oligopoly and graphing its behavior as required.

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1. Explain the key characteristics of an oligopoly and how they apply to your chosen healthcare component (hint: this should be short bullet format)
2. Discuss the market behavior of firms in your chosen healthcare component, considering factors such as pricing, market concentration, and barriers to entry
3. Include a graph illustrating the behavior of your chosen oligopolistic healthcare component, with properly labeled axes, demand and supply curves, marginal cost/revenue, average total cost, average variable costs and and any other relevant elements.
4. Identify one specific regulation (Hint: consider the antitrust and government regulations studied in this course) that applies to your chosen healthcare component and analyze its impact on the market

thank you in advance