Net Profit Margins in the Healthcare Sector
Drug Manufactures, General ==> 13.1%
Drug Manufactures, Specialty and Generic ==> -63.5%
Healthcare Plans ==> -16.2%
Health Information Services ==> -25.7%
Medical Care Facilities ==> -5.9%
Medical Devices ==> -46.6%
Medical Distribution ==> 3.6%
Medical Instruments and Supplies ==> -14.2%
Healthcare Plans
One challenge faced by Healthcare Plans involves growth in new services that government agencies insist MUST be covered. Trans-gender procedures, drugs and therapy come to mind.
Another challenge involves having to cover preexisting conditions like HIV.
It is possible that rates might be subsidized via government grants for lower income families after-the-fact. That is, the healthcare insurance provider runs a loss and then submits vouchers to get reimbursed.
Medical Care Facility challenges
Major hospitals face a couple major issues. One is that during the Covid shutdowns, many doctors figured out that they don't HAVE to send patients to the hospital for basic testing if they have their own equipment. It proved more profitable (and convenient) for the doctors to take their own X-Rays, for instance. That deprived hospitals of "procedures" that they relied on to spread the overhead.
Another challenge is that the recent surge in immigrants uses the Emergency Room as their primary interface to get medical care. E-Rooms are a very expensive way to deliver medical care...and the immigrants typically have no healthcare insurance nor other means of paying for the services.
Step-down Facilities are hammered with staffing issues. While hospitals have lots of nurses, doctors and technicians, step-down facilities have CNAs (Certified Nursing Assistants) and "aides" and "orderlies". Those jobs involve dealing with human feces, vomit, infections, disturbed (sometimes abusive) patients, hoisting bodies and making beds. Many of the CNAs were people working toward their RN or building up their resume after graduating from college...and paying off their student debt or recent immigrants happy to work menial jobs while developing other skills. Step-down facilities are revolving doors for employees and are struggling to find people who are willing to work for the wages set by heathcare reimbursements and legally mandated staffing levels.
Locally, we see continued "rationalizing" of the medical service providers as local less-efficient providers are absorbed by equally inefficient providers with deeper pockets.
This does not end well and the only thing you can do about it is to stay healthy and minimize interactions with the medical establishment.
The three laws of thermodynamics
You cannot win.
You cannot break even.
You have to play the game...but you can influence the AMOUNT you play the game.
A very humble example
I used to have a couple slices of peanut-butter toast in the morning. Peanut butter usually contains hydrogenated peanut oil and sweeteners like high-fructose corn syrup.
I switched to dry-roasted peanuts. No hydrogenated peanut oil. No sugar(s).
Even little changes make a difference.
You can make your own peanut butter. Toast is better in my mind than a hand full of nuts.
ReplyDeleteYup. Roasted Spanish peanuts in a food processor and you're on your way.
DeleteBoat Guy
Isn't DIY peanut butter difficult to clean up afterwards ? Breakfast for me is before my job begins, so am in rush to leave. Those health benefits do sound good - I am Type II diabetic right now.
Delete"Another challenge is that the recent surge in immigrants uses the Emergency Room as their primary interface to get medical care."
ReplyDeleteI live in California where "governor" Screwsom, with a stroke of the pen, gave 2/3 of illegals (from birth to 21 and from 65 until death) access to MediCal (Medicaid). Now citizens and legal residents have to wait in line behind these people. My last ER visit cost me a ten-hour wait! I tried to explain this to my uber-Left mother who lives in Texas. She says "That can't be so!" You just can't fix those who have been sucked in by that cult...
There you sit, suffering while immigrants with infected hang-nails, sprained wrists, sore throats, foreign-object-in-eye, and constipation clog up the system.
DeleteER protocol pushes the intake through hard-core diagnostics because there is no history on Bob Smith or Mohammad Khan or Jose Hernandez. X-rays, blood-work blah, blah, blah...
That is the reality of Biden's America. 90% of those issues could be handled by the local doc-in-a-box or a quick visit on-line and O-T-C remedies.
I would ditch medical insurance if my wife would let me (we still have kids... she insists). The way the numbers work, is I'm paying 20-grand.
ReplyDeleteIt's either 8k of premiums, and you pay the first 12, or it's 12k in premiums, you pay the first 8. Either way, the insurance company stops paying, at 25k.
So you spend 20k, to save 5.
The 'jig' is, you get the 'club prices' for stuff, whereas if you're a cash customer off the street, they have a completely different price list that just adds a zero to the 'club price'.
It's criminal, Obama should be hung for it (among many other reasons).
Hubby had cobra when we moved states. It covered him for 14 months in new home. Within that time he was diagnosed with 2 medical problems. And I started looking for med ins. Couldn't find one because of the pr-existing conditions. Then 3 months after cobra was done he had 5 bypass surgery. Big dip into our savings. No One Would Insure Him. So new home was never without medical services and hospital stays for him for 10 years. Never be without health insurance.
DeleteJoe, Crazy Richard's peanut butter has just one ingredient - peanuts.
ReplyDeleteAnon has it right. Off the street, cash deals are much cheaper!
ReplyDeleteAgreed, we have been cash pay for 20 years. At the drs office they take 20-30 percent off the top if you pay immediately.
DeleteI do have a catastrophic policy that pays 100% above $12,000 for $285/ month per person. But it has always been cheaper to cash pay so far.
Part of the issue with Drug Specialty is that most of the low hanging fruit for treatment has already been manufactured. The conditions are harder and harder to find treatments for (see Alzheimer's, for example) and thus they are more and more expensive to try to develop products for them.
ReplyDeleteDrug discovery is a roulette game: you hope you hit something before the wheel (money) runs out.
There was recently a study of medical studies that showed over 90% aren't reproducible, which led to eggs are [good, bad, good, in moderation]. The rest were questionable.
ReplyDeleteI've seen uncountable old people living long healthy lives with 50+ years of bacon and Froot Loops and BHT and corn syrup. Life spans of native-born Americans continues to increase.
"Pure" foods however defined will lead to less food at greater cost, which means lives. The left accepts casualties in the fight against climate change. Will the right also have an acceptable casualties number in the fight against hydrogenated vegetable oil?
This food-n-drug purity phase with die back down to it's normal background noise as soon as RFK aggrandizes himself outta there.
There's lies, Damned lies, and then there's government statistics.
ReplyDeleteI don't buy it, sorry. Their stocks trade like they make money hand over fist. Their executives make more money than most African nations... do not believe those statistics one whit. Sorry.
Much of the sizzle in the stock market is due to the huge amounts of money that is being injected into the economy.
DeleteExecutive pay only counts the ones who are still working. If the sector(s) keep losing money, they will be laid off and will have no salary.
Statistics get quoted very causally. I had a Union official explain to me that GM made HUGE amounts of money on every Grand Am. That was when they were selling for $10k. He explained that they made $8500 on every vehicle they pushed out the door.
A year later, I was in a diagonal-slice meeting where the plant manager said that the cost for Lansing to ASSEMBLE a Grand Am was $1400. That was just the cost of the hourly labor to bolt/weld all of the parts together. That did not include the fixed costs or the cost of the parts or paint.
Somewhere along the line, the $1400 per Grand Am became "$1400 to make a Grand Am" which became "Profit is MSRP - $1400"
So even though the $1400 was a correct number, it didn't mean what the folks using it as a sledge-hammer wanted it to mean.
ERJ, look for a peanut butter that just has peanuts and salt on the ingredient list. Brand names will vary, I buy something called Teddie’s. You will need to stir it up, which is a pain, but the taste is much better.
ReplyDeleteERJ: The very best peanut butter that I've found is from COSTCO: Organic peanuts, salt. Tastes great !
ReplyDeleteTo your final point ERJ, regardless of the outcomes that happen elsewhere, the individual is going to become a lot more responsible for their own health almost by default.
ReplyDeleteThat's a lot of money. A tenth of a percent would hire a hundred willing and able killers to solve the problem, and wipe out the first few ranks before anyone squealed. Hope the Trumpites have invested similarly in security. Even if it is all a doomed clownshow....
ReplyDeleteStefan v.