Re:Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China
by arkades on Friday April 10, 2020 @02:20PM
(#22835834)
Probably not?
I mean, as a personal consumer, yes - I'd pay a premium on my own products to buy American. I do, in fact, do that when it's an option.
As an organizational representative, though, that's iffier. Healthcare reimbursement is pretty heavily regulated (most of the wild price fluctuation you see has to do with numbers used for public-facing negotiations, not the contracted rates we actually ever get paid.) The only way we get by is by minimizing costs; we can't really increase revenue effectively, except by increasing volume of services. As it is, operating margins in hospitals tend to run at about 2% - it's razor, razor thin. Upping expenses 50% on "critical" items (which for us is, you know, a huge proportion of our stuff) would put us out of business.
It's not something we can do unilaterally. Either it has be funded through an increase in funding earmarked for that, or something equivalent.
I mean, as a personal consumer, yes - I'd pay a premium on my own products to buy American. I do, in fact, do that when it's an option.
As an organizational representative, though, that's iffier. Healthcare reimbursement is pretty heavily regulated (most of the wild price fluctuation you see has to do with numbers used for public-facing negotiations, not the contracted rates we actually ever get paid.) The only way we get by is by minimizing costs; we can't really increase revenue effectively, except by increasing volume of services. As it is, operating margins in hospitals tend to run at about 2% - it's razor, razor thin. Upping expenses 50% on "critical" items (which for us is, you know, a huge proportion of our stuff) would put us out of business.
It's not something we can do unilaterally. Either it has be funded through an increase in funding earmarked for that, or something equivalent.