Fundamentally though, isn't it amasing how quickly people run to sink the boot into Smedley and the prospects for MAY ?
Don't remember there being to many critics of him when he turned the Colonial operation into a giant at considerable financial gain to its shareholdes ?
What is interesting here is that he is applying exactly the sort of cost cutting to the hospitals that he has applied to any other operation. The difference is that he is't dealing with crowds of bank tellers that can be retrenched whilst building sophisticated marketing channels for financial products.
He is dealing with the medical industry which is a closeted, rort ridden basket case driven by one of the most powerful 'unions' in the country, the AMA.
Further more the unions members are above average intelligence professionals who know how to not take attacks on their priviledges lying down. And they have an excellent moral arguement to hide behind whilst they conduct a guerilla war against Smedleys changes by undermining patient inflows to his hospitals.
The latest impost on MAY, insurance, will be as short term an issue as the future of the medical industry insurer UMP. Why ? Because the Federal government has no choice but to find a solution to this matter to keep medical services available to the public. And when it does, MAY will also benifit from that solution.
Most likely it will be some form of legislative restriction to damages which will send the legal profession screaming to the barracades - but at the end of the day, that will be better than completely indemnifying doctors before they will perform any surgical practise on you or having no medical facilities available at all.
And I suspect Smedley is a pragmatist, his hospitals need patients, the doctors have the patients and good hospital managers are available for employment any day of the week.
MAY's hospital crisis will be fixed and is only one part of a strongly cashed up conglomerate.
For those praying for a buyback, I reckon that's about as likely as Freemantle Dockers winning the 2002 Premiership. The Smedley Rottweiler doesn't give back capital to anyone.....
That's why the price is taking such a shagging...
SYB Price at posting:
0.0¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held
