But TLDs are not fungible. If Apple switched to apple.name or apple.hospital because "it's cheaper" you'd raise more eyebrows than you have.

That's part of my point. Since customers can't actually replace a ".com" domain with a domain from a "competitor" TLD, it isn't actually competition.

If .name was just as good as .com then if verisign increased the price, they would lose customers who would use .name instead. So the fact that verisign can increase the price when .com is _already_ more expensive than other TLDs is evidence that they do have a monopoly.