Author: Devon Herrick

Texas Hospitals Thrive While Saddling Patients with High Medical Bills and Debt

Posted on by Devon Herrick

Kaiser Health News and the Urban Institute looked at areas with high medical debt and compared them to hospitals’ profit margins. It profiled the North Texas region surrounding Dallas-Fort Worth.

Of the nation’s 20 most populous counties, none has a higher concentration of medical debt than Tarrant County, home to Fort Worth. Second is Dallas County, credit bureau data shows.

Does a lot of medical debt indicate that a Urban Institute are struggling to pay their medical bills and the local hospitals are struggling as a result? That was not the case according to the analysis.

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Doctors: Friends Don’t Let Friends Ride Bicycles Stoned

Posted on by Devon Herrick

From 2019 to 2020 more than 11,000 patients were treated in hospital emergency rooms for bicycle accidents while high on methamphetamine, marijuana or opioids. Some were also drunk or had been drinking alcohol.

The most common drugs found were methamphetamine (36%); marijuana (32%); and opioids (19%). Nearly a quarter of injured bikers had also been drinking alcohol, the study found.

Researchers speculate that some of the crash victims may have suffered fatal injuries.

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Non-Profit Hospitals Earn Big Profits, Many Don’t Provide Much Charity Care

Posted on by Devon Herrick

More than half of the nation’s 5,000 hospitals operate as not-for-profit entities. In theory non-profit hospitals get an exemption from income tax, property tax, sales tax and get preferential financing because they provide a public service to the communities in which they operate. I worked for a large non-profit hospital system years ago and a financial analyst did the math and estimated our tax exclusion was worth something like $100 million a year. In return for the huge tax advantage all the hospital had to do was provide between 4% and 5% of net revenue in charity care for low-income patients.

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Death and Dying is a Growth Industry

Posted on by Devon Herrick

Wherever baby boomers have gone they’ve strained institutions. Hospitals were filled to the brim with babies in the post WWII years through 1964. Schools were full and more had to be built. Colleges too were filled to capacity with the huge cohort of Americans born between 1946 and 1964. Nowadays approximately 73 million baby boomers are heading for old age. As boomers passed into late middle-age, they created a Golden Age of Rectums resulting in investors buying the practices of gastroenterologists. Investors are also buying nursing homes, which is a growth industry as boomers age. With a huge cohort of boomers slipping into old age, death is becoming a growth industry. Hospice care practices are being acquired by investors, as is presiding over boomers’ death. A new example appeared in Kaiser Health News and Fortune. Death is anything but a dying business as private equity cashes in on the $23 billion funeral home industry.

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