That's the argument being made. The buyer is better off staying with the single supplier. The argument is that this is a breakdown in markets and should be regulated (for instance by breaking the supplier apart).

If the buyer is better off, and presumably the consumer, who's worse off? The woman who wrote the article that can't compete? She can't force the hospital to go against its interest and purchase her product?

Everyone except the supplier is worse off. Remember, a 50% discount on 3x price increase is still a huge price increase.

Further it's all short vs long term pricing. In the short term a company will setup lower prices to kill of competitors, the when there is no competition they raise prices significantly to have a long term war chest. So, on a day to day basis they might be the cheapest option, but their average price over decades is more than their short lived competition.

It's local optima - they get the 50% price dip from buying 100% instead of 99%, because it saves the monopoly money by killing competitors before they spring up, but the lack of competition hurts the consumers because the monopoly has no incentive to drop their prices or really innovate until a competitor with the ability to drop consumer's costs by MORE THAN FIFTY PERCENT comes along.

So even if a competitor with 10% cheaper goods comes along, the consumer sticks with the monopoly 100%, for fear of being dicked by the consumer's 99% prices.

That doesn't mean the consumer is better off. The consumer is missing out on better products. The economy is also worse off, because it is missing out on competition which would drive the prices down, and provide jobs.

In an ideal world, such agreements would be illegal, leading to a freer market.

the hospital and its staff are worse off in that they are using products that aren't the best available. the hospital is also worse off in that it is effectively blocked from pursuing innovations in medical device technology because it is obligated to only buy medical devices supplied by the monopolist.