Walmart, Walgreens, Krogers, etc., are all experimenting with opening up state by state, inexpensive health-care clinics. These clinics will open up basic health care and will be dirt cheap. Forget about Obamacare, which is impossible to understand and is being overturned by courts all over the place. Walmart-care might be the replacement. Biggest beneficiary will be of course WMT but WAG started the trend and I like them trading at less than eight times trailing EBITDA. Unlike WMT, I think WAG could be a takeover target.
I hope.
Where I live, the local Wal-Mart has an eye doctor with a tiny office located right in the store. I had my eyes checked and got a prescription for contacts in 20 minutes. It cost $50 and didn't involve a third party. My old eye doc used to keep me waiting for an hour and charge my insurance company $135.
ReplyDeleteCommerce rocks.
You quote James Altucher who says the clinic will provide health care services dirt cheap.
ReplyDeleteCurrently I receive Medicaid services at a choice of one three Community Health clinics in Bellingham, WA, where according to one source the cost is $170 or more. So how in the world can privatized health care be dirt cheap. Being on SSI Disability of 674 a month, I could only afford $20 per visit. And I know Krogers will not provide medical care for anything in that price range.
I went to Walmart a few weeks ago due to a sinus infection for antibiotics. I would have gone to a doctor but the two that I had time to check with weren't taking new patients. It cost me $75 for the visit plus $5 for the antibiotics. The Walmart pharmacy was slow filling my prescription but I had the antibiotics in a little over two hours. I find this convenient for people that don't have insurance. My last sinus infection two years ago cost me $120 total just to get antibiotics. In the future, with extra money, I'll buy a couple of rounds of antibiotics online so that I don't need to go to the doctor or nurse.
ReplyDelete"Currently I receive Medicaid services at a choice of one three Community Health clinics in Bellingham, WA, where according to one source the cost is $170 or more. So how in the world can privatized health care be dirt cheap. Being on SSI Disability of 674 a month, I could only afford $20 per visit. And I know Krogers will not provide medical care for anything in that price range."
ReplyDeleteStudy economics and you will figure out how.
A couple of things about the Community Clinic:
ReplyDeleteThe "price" of their services is different based on who is paying. Medicaid (i.e., theyenguy's neighbor that pays taxes) might pick up the whole tab or all but a co-pay. Or the visit might be billed to insurance, some grant program (undoubtedly funded by taxpayers, by extorting insurance companies, or through organizations like George Soros' Tides Foundation). In any of these cases the price paid for the service is the maximum that the paying "program" will reimburse the clinic. The cost of securing and managing these payment "contracts" adds significantly to the operational costs of the clinic:
- There has to be a person to maintain the political contacts and make sure the clinic is in the good graces of the wealth redistributionists.
- There has to be a whole billing department that sends out the claims for reimbursement and processes the payments. These folks need salaries, benefits, space to work, supplies, etc. Since the billing process is not the same for all sources of payment these folks need a substantial amount of training. And since Community Health Center billing is different that a "private" clinic even for government plans, even experienced new hires require a good deal of training.
- There are expenditures on the information systems required to support all the various transactions required for the clinic to receive payment.
- There are government mandates for these clinics to install electronic medical records systems in order to continue receiving payments that have been taken by taxpayers.
Shew..... and maybe you thought thought these clinics were propped up by private donations... think again it's only a small part of their income.
The models Altucher is talking about cut out all of this nonsense of clinics spending so much money on efforts that aren't directly related to providing medical services.
I was talking with my internist today and he was telling me that starting in 2012 some kind of Obamacare thing kicks in where some of his pay is determined by how well his patients follow his care and stay healthy. He said if he cares for let's say an overweight person that is pre-diabetic and recommends a treatment plan that includes taking a medication, eating healthier and exercising and the patient doesn't do any of it and then ends up in the Hospital as a result, he gets dinged for that and may even be asked to return fees he collected for that patient. On the flip side if the patient follows his plan and becomes healthier he gets a bonus.
ReplyDeleteSo guess what his office is planning to do? They are sending patient termination letters to their chronically ill patients that have a history of not following Dr's orders or poor health. He said he is just doing what every other internist is planning on doing to deal with this new payment strategy. I asked him what he was planning to do when the government intervenes and prevents him from firing patients? Without even pausing his answer was --"Quit!". Sadly this is a Doc that has been in practice almost 25years. That's a lot of experience to loose and I have to imagine that there are many of the more financially well off experienced Docs like him that have a similar attitude about staying in the field.
Maybe Walmart will fill the gap left by Docs too frustrated to keep in practice. Aferall, paper work, bureaucracy, low fees and slow payments are no big deal to an org like Walmart.