January 2019 - Olavi Group

Averages Over Time

In many ways, I'm a below average driver. I only drive about 4,000 miles a year so I don't get much practice. I use a blinker most of the time but I'm not always courteous. Sometimes I cut in at the last minute, which I recently read is actually good for traffic flows, even it if makes me reticent about checking my mirror for the gestures of other drivers. I do return the favor and let people in. I run red lights when the risks are low. However, I can parallel park, and I drive well in the snow ...

Arbitrage and Healthcare

There are different types of arbitrage. Dictionary.com defines one form as the "the simultaneous purchase and sale of the same securities, commodities or foreign exchange in different markets to profit from unequal prices." Imagine buying gold in Italy in euros and selling it at the same time in New York in dollars. Those differences are short-lived and have transaction costs. Millions of people doing this across different transactions every day are what drives efficiency and price discovery Ri ...

January’s Healthcare Index

Inspired by the monthly Harper's Index, this is 2019's first index on healthcare and finance. The average ratio of Medicaid-to-Medicare payments spending across the US across all services: .72; In CA: .52. The factor by which commercial insurance payments exceed the reimbursements from Medicare: 1.88x The net assets of HCA, the largest publicly-traded hospital in the US: negative $13.3B; revenue: $46B; free cash flow yield: 5%. Free cash flow yield of Bank of America: 11.5%. ...

What Bartleby Says

It's a fine day for the people who care about this sort of stuff when the topic of corporate wellness makes the year's first edition of The Economist. New resolutions for a new year surely had something to do with the timing. The Bartleby column is out with The spy who hired me. More heat and bleach is needed on wellness (or it's more sophisticated twin or sibling, wellbeing) and the people who sell it. What also makes this a fine subject, is for all but the sellers of these programs, it can uni ...