[We’re practically speechless, so we’ll just ask one question: How can a non-profit double its net income — with zero membership growth — and still call itself a non-profit?]
From San Francisco Business Times:
Kaiser Permanente’s 9-months’ profit more than doubles to $2.5 billion
by Chris Rauber
Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc., Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and their subsidiaries announced gigantic jumps in net income, operating income and investment income for the third quarter ending September and the year’s first three quarters, including startling increases sure to raise questions about the organization’s non-profit status.
Operating income more than doubled from $868 million in the first three quarters of 2006 to $1.8 billion this year, and first nine-months’ net income soared from $1.1 billion to $2.5 billion, officials said Nov. 7.
Net income in the third quarter, meanwhile, jumped 56.8 percent, from $417 million last year to $654 million for the quarter that ended Sept. 30.
In other major developments, officials at the Oakland-based health-care giant said Wednesday:
* Third-quarter operating income jumped 26.5 percent from last year’s $355 million to $449 million.
* Operating revenue for the quarter was $9.4 billion, up 8 percent from $8.7 billion a year earlier.
* Operating revenue for the first nine months jumped 9.3 percent, from $25.8 billion to $28.2 billion.
Kaiser also posted $205 million in non-operating third-quarter income, resulting in a quarterly net income of $654 million, up nearly 57 percent from $417 million in 2006’s third quarter. Kaiser attributed that explosive growth to a strong performance in finanical markets.
* Capital spending totaled $641 million for the third quarter, compared to $631 million a year earlier, while year-to-date capital spending for the nine months ended September 30 was $1.8 billion, compared with $1.9 billion during 2006’s same nine-month period.
Membership remained “relatively flat” at 8.7 million members. Officials at the Oakland-based health-care giant said “ongoing efforts to address health-care delivery costs and administrative efficiencies” contributed to the strong financial results for the quarter.
Previously:
“ongoing efforts to address health-care delivery costs”
Such as trying to cut costs by setting up a death trap kidney transplant “program”?
Or dumping ‘costly’ homeless patients on the street (again and again)?
Or yanking coverage from a woman after you figure out she’s going to be more costly to care for than your underwriters originally thought, since she was just diagnosed with an expensive disease?
Or how about covering up a doctor’s incompetence since he’s a specialist and they’re expensive to recruit?
Yup. Good job, Kaiser, on those “ongoing efforts to address health-care delivery costs.” What’s a life or two here or there, a bit of pain and suffering from time to time when it helps generate $2.5 billion in profit?!
[…] have been more on point: “Officials at the Oakland-based health-care giant said ‘ongoing efforts to address health-care delivery costs and administrative efficiencies‘ contributed to the strong financial results for the quarter.” Profit, at the expense […]