Your [Clinton's] other point of having to pass along the increased [health insurance] costs to my customers in the competitive marketplace simply does not work that way larger competitors have more staying power before they go bankrupt than a smaller competitor[.]

Cain has set out the classic argument about predatory pricing:

In business and economics, predatory pricing is the practice of selling a product or service at a very low price, intending to drive competitors out of the market, or create barriers to entry for potential new competitors. If competitors or potential competitors cannot sustain equal or lower prices without losing money, they go out of business or choose not to enter the business. The predatory merchant then has fewer competitors or is even a de facto monopoly, and hypothetically could then raise prices above what the market would otherwise bear.

Critics of the concept argue that it is a conspiracy theory, that there are "virtually no... economists" who believe the theory behind the concept (although a few believe it is theoretically possible based on models, there are virtually none who believe it is an empirical phenomenon), and that there are no known examples of a company raising prices after vanquishing all possible competition.

(Emphasis supplied.) Here is a 1992 paper by the CATO Institute deriding "The Myth of Predatory Pricing":

Predatory pricing is one of the oldest big business conspiracy theories. It was popularized in the late 19th century by journalists such as Ida Tarbell, who in History of the Standard Oil Company excoriated John D. Rockefeller because Standard Oil's low prices had driven her brother's employer, the Pure Oil Company, from the petroleum-refining business.(1) "Cutting to Kill" was the title of the chapter in which Tarbell condemned Standard Oil's allegedly predatory price cutting.

The predatory pricing argument is very simple. The predatory firm first lowers its price until it is below the average cost of its competitors. The competitors must then lower their prices below average cost, thereby losing money on each unit sold. If they fail to cut their prices, they will lose virtually all of their market share; if they do cut their prices, they will eventually go bankrupt. After the competition has been forced out of the market, the predatory firm raises its price, compensating itself for the money it lost while it was engaged in predatory pricing, and earns monopoly profits forever after.

The theory of predatory pricing has always seemed to have a grain of truth to it--at least to noneconomists--but research over the past 35 years has shown that predatory pricing as a strategy for monopolizing an industry is irra- tional, that there has never been a single clear-cut example of a monopoly created by so-called predatory pricing, and that claims of predatory pricing are typically made by com- petitors who are either unwilling or unable to cut their own prices. Thus, legal restrictions on price cutting, in the name of combatting "predation," are inevitably protectionist and anti-consumer, as Harold Demsetz noted.(2)

Predatory pricing is the Rodney Dangerfield of economic theory--it gets virtually no respect from economists. But it is still a popular legal and political theory for several reasons. First, huge sums of money are involved in predato- ry pricing litigation, which guarantees that the antitrust bar will always be fond of the theory of predatory pricing. During the 1970s AT&T estimated that it spent over $100 million a year defending itself against claims of predatory pricing. It has been estimated that the average cost to a major corporation of litigating a predation case is $30 million.(3)

I'm not going to argue the validity of predatory pricing as a concept here, but instead only note that erstwhile conservatives like Cain sure seem willing to embrace when it suits them. Call it my Legal Realist theory of political argument.