Whatever the other merits of this proposal, funneling another ~$30B to hospitals is the antithesis of "targeted relief."

A dozen hospital chains just presented at #JPM21, two weeks ago.

General theme: Financially speaking, hospitals are doing quite well. 1/n

We have, for example, Community Health Systems, which operates 89 hospitals in 16 states, many of them in smaller towns / metro areas.

Through the pandemic, CHS's EBITDA margin never even fell into single digits, and profitability actually *increased* in 2020.
Meanwhile, Lifepoint Health (84 hospitals, 30 states) also saw profits increase in 2020, while its cash-to-debt ratio fell. Pretty solid year.
ProMedica Health (non-profit, 13 Midwestern hospitals) actually saw profits increase even in *the first half of 2020,* when hospitals were supposedly facing catastrophe.

They finished the year with ~$440M of EBITDA, and $2.3B of cash on hand.
Baylor Scott & White (52 hospitals) saw its profit margin *more than double* during the pandemic year, and ended September with $7.8 billion of cash and portfolio investments.

That's about $600M more than they had pre-pandemic.
Mass General Brigham's cash pile is now over $11 billion, which is roughly twice what Congress proposes to allocate to all rural hospitals in this proposal.

That number is *up* by ~$2B from the start of the pandemic, which is quite something.
Head down the Atlantic coast to NY, and we find that (non-profit) Northwell Health's EBITDA margin did dip a bit in 2020, but not dramatically.

And, like every other chain in this thread, Northwell ended up with a healthier balance sheet than at the beginning of the crisis.
If we turn back to the Midwest, we might look to OhioHealth, a highly profitable "not-for-profit" with 12 hospitals.

Not clear why they need $6.2 billion of cash on hand (4x their total debt), but they have it, which must be nice.
While we're in the neighborhood, we may want to look north, toward Michigan, home to Henry Ford (5 hospitals) and Spectrum Health (14 hospitals).

And...yup! Cash upon cash. Spectrum's cash pile increased by a quarter (~$1B) in the year to September.

Why?
We could also take a look around Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma and Wisconsin, perhaps through the lens of SSM Health's 23 hospitals in those states.

SSM enjoyed revenue growth in 2020, and currently sits on a tidy pile of $4.4 billion.
Let's keep heading west. We'll make a stop in Utah, where local giant Intermountain is giving Mass General a run for its money. As a...portfolio manager.

Another hospital chain, with $11B of cash on hand, and a nice healthy profit margin.
And now, to the Pacific Coast. Providence is a good example - 51 hospitals from California to Alaska, along with a few facilities in MT, NM and TX.

EBITDA margins were down a smidge, but cash was up by $2B to an eye-popping $14.5B.

Is that a lot? It seems like a lot.
We can keep going, though I am not sure we need to.

There's Tenet, with its 40% EBITDA margin on surgical facilities. Or UHS, where free cash flow more than doubled in 2020...

But, at this point, I think the picture is clear. Congress is wasting your money. /n

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global health policy in 2020 has centered around NPI's (non-pharmaceutical interventions) like distancing, masks, school closures

these have been sold as a way to stop infection as though this were science.

this was never true and that fact was known and knowable.

let's look.


above is the plot of social restriction and NPI vs total death per million. there is 0 R2. this means that the variables play no role in explaining one another.

we can see this same relationship between NPI and all cause deaths.

this is devastating to the case for NPI.


clearly, correlation is not proof of causality, but a total lack of correlation IS proof that there was no material causality.

barring massive and implausible coincidence, it's essentially impossible to cause something and not correlate to it, especially 51 times.

this would seem to pose some very serious questions for those claiming that lockdowns work, those basing policy upon them, and those claiming this is the side of science.

there is no science here nor any data. this is the febrile imaginings of discredited modelers.

this has been clear and obvious from all over the world since the beginning and had been proven so clearly by may that it's hard to imagine anyone who is actually conversant with the data still believing in these responses.

everyone got the same R
It is simply not correct to point fingers at wind & solar energy as we try to understand the situation in TX. The system (almost) had a plan for weather (almost) like this. 1/x


It relied on very little wind energy - that was the plan. It relied on a lot of natural gas - that was the plan. It relied on all of its nuclear energy - that was the plan. 2/x

There was enough natural gas, coal and nuclear capacity installed to survive this event - it was NOT "forced out" by the wind energy expansion. It was there. 3/x

Wind, natural gas, coal and nuclear plants all failed to deliver on their expectations for long periods of time. The biggest gap was in natural gas! The generators were there, but they were not able to deliver. 4/x

It may be fair to ask why there is so much wind energy in ERCOT if we do NOT expect it to deliver during weather events like this, but that is an entirely different question - and one with a lot of great answers!! 5/x

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