In my personal experience, I think the following industries belong to the profiteering industry: pharmaceuticals, eyeglasses, and insurance.
The first thing to say is the pharmaceutical industry.
I should know this industry very well, because my boyfriend's family runs a pharmaceutical company. Pharmaceuticals have always been associated with benevolence and charity in our minds, but in reality the industry is more profitable than one can imagine in many cases.
My boyfriend often tells me about the profit margins of various medicines and equipment. Let's say, for example, that some of the medicines we commonly use only cost 10 yuan when they leave the factory, but when they are sold to pharmacies and hospitals, the resale price becomes 20 or 30 yuan or even more, and when pharmacies and hospitals sell the medicines to the patients, the price is even higher, usually doubled! Or even higher. The exact pricing depends on the type of drug, how often it is used, how rare it is, and so on.
Nowadays, many hospitals announce the prices of their medicines on the display screens in the halls, and my boyfriend and I went to see them, and basically, these announced data are equal to the prices, which means that the hospitals don't make any profit from them. In fact, these input price figures are all fake. The selling price of the drugs is indeed that figure, but the input price is actually much lower.
Similarly, the same is true for medical equipment. My boyfriend's sister is the general agent of a German brand of medical equipment in China, and the cost of a set of medical equipment is only 20,000, but when it is sold to the hospital, the price becomes 100,000 or even higher, which is about four times the profit.
This shows that the profiteering in the pharmaceutical industry is beyond the imagination of the general public.
In addition, eyeglasses are also a profitable industry.
I am nearsighted, and I often go to the glasses, and after a long time, I got acquainted with the clerk in the eyeglasses store.
The clerk told me that the purchase price of a pair of frames and lenses is actually very low, only a single digit or two digits, and even some of the expensive lenses are very affordable. But after a round trip from the eyeglasses store, the price to the consumer becomes hundreds or thousands of dollars, of which the profit is calculated in multiples.
For example, we spend a thousand dollars on a pair of glasses, but the cost of the glasses is only one or two hundred dollars. From this, the eyeglasses industry's profiteering can be seen.
As for my comment that insurance is a profitable industry, I don't mean that insurance itself is profitable, but that insurance salesmen are profitable.
A friend of mine is a supervisor of a well-known insurance company, and I once went to a seminar where she gave internal training to her staff, and that's when it became clear how high the insurance salesman's commission is.
For example, if they sell an insurance product to a customer, and if the customer buys a $5,000 insurance policy, then the commission they get may be $1,000 or even $2,000. It is because of their huge profits that so many people still rush for the insurance industry, even though they know that the people abhor insurance salesmen.
The above three industries are the ones that I think are very profitable, and although it is just my personal opinion, it seems to me that their profiteering is real.