I can't say laying off hospital employees makes sense in the middle of a pandemic. Usually seems like unnecessary layoffs result in a pay raise for the CEOs. Hopefully it's not because of greed...but it normally is.
I'm not sure what our boat dealership is going to look like long term. Right now we're actually in a pretty good position, but as stock has dwindled into nothing I wonder if it'll hurt us long term. We typically have 45-50 boats in stock, but with nobody traveling, cruise ships cancelled, and theme parks closed, the only thing you can really do to get away from it all is go boating. Our stock that we'd normally be selling for the rest of the year is completely gone. 2021 models started arriving 2-3 weeks ago and we already only have about 5 2020s left. All of the 2021s coming in are sold until Oct-Nov.
A lot of my job revolves around the inventory, so with no inventory I've pretty much just been coming to work and spending my day on the internet. It's boring af, but I guess I can't complain. We all figured business would be dead and we'd be desperate to make some sales, instead the opposite happened.
Most rural, non profit hospitals barely get by. With outpatient services limited, they're losing money hand over fist. At one point, we were losing a million a day of revenue. If this doesn't get worse, those layoffs allowed the system to break even for the year, which for a hospital our size means that we'll be behind $15 to 20 million in capital expenditures next year, which are needed to keep the equipment and facility up to date. Unfortunately, it's going to get worse. I'll be ok, I'm retired military and I've already told my boss she can move me from FTE to a consultant, to trim the operational budget, and move my hours to the project centers of my projects, but it's going to get ugly for a lot more people when we have to stop outpatient surgeries and other outpatient services.
Hospitals are lucky to see 4% profit margins in a good year, most rural operate in the negative. Pharmacies operate about 4% also, as do insurance companies. Pharma operates between 10 and 22%. The real costs of health care are Americans terrible health, specialists pay, lack of primary care providers (pushing more care to specialists), pharma and uncompensated care.