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%. ...
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 ...
This journey started small but 48 posts later and I can say I wrote down my thoughts, observations, and research. For over 90% of the weeks, I put meaningful time and research into 2018's blog posts. My work and research have taken me to Boston to learn and work on promoting programs like Quizzify; there I met the generous and wise Al Lewis. I've worked with companies on helping to make reports better, found truth behind the data, validated ROI calculations, revealed truths hidden in public comp ...
Without Benjamin Graham we may not know the name Warren Buffett. Graham was an investor, professor, and practical philosopher. He wrote the masterpiece Security Analysis during the midst of the Great Depression, as well as The Intelligent Investor, and was a professor, mentor, and employer to Buffett. Graham wrote that the markets in the short term are like popularity contests. The short-term prices move around more than the true underlying value of an asset. In the long term there is more paus ...
November has past and healthcare open enrollment is behind us. It's the time when spreadsheets are pulled together, employees and spouses (even actuaries) run front and back of the envelope calculations to decide where to enroll. Stock photos of happy couples in the 30-page guides beckon workers toward a tortuous process. It's usually a choice of 2 or 3 medical plans. In many cases, it's supposed to be kind of a pain, since one way for companies to lower benefit costs is to nudge, gently dissuad ...
