True or False
Since no one party owns a not-for-profit hospital, physicians really own the hospital’s business.
The value of any capital project can be assessed by estimating expected future cash flows from the project and discounting them to the present value. This procedure accounts for the time value of money.
Consumer cooperatives have a long and successful history in development of the HMO.
For-profit firms make up the bulk of hospital organizations.
Kaiser Health Plan is the only HMO in the U.S. to consistently maintain its core competencies. That is, it has kept client satisfaction high, while keeping the growth rate of premiums higher than the growth rate of medical costs.
When Allegheny Hospital System (AHERF) went bankrupt, the price of borrowing for all hospitals increased. This is an example of correlated system risk.
It could be argued that the federal and state governments provide an implicit guarantee of hospital borrowings because revenue from Medicare and Medicaid patients is assumed to be guaranteed.
Venture capitalists are entrepreneurs who specialize in high-risk investments. Often they are the only available source of financing for small startup biotech companies, which very rarely are able to obtain bank loans to finance their research.
One of the most important things an HMO should do to stay profitable is to make sure a) the medical costs’ rate of growth is below the rate of growth of premiums (revenues), and b) customer satisfaction does not slip.
Research studies indicate that when a non-profit healthcare organization is converted to a for-profit status, it might lead to higher prices and a reduction in the number of services offered, if the converting organization had significant monopolistic market power in that geographical area.