In America there's a mix of profit and nonprofit. Here in Umbrell organization of 13 different hospitals, you are nonprofit and yet there are for-profit hospitals. So first question is how does that profit and nonprofit thing affect the competitive environment? And the next question would be do you face significant competition in the St. Louis here given your size? There is, so the two questions, profit, not profit, and then competition.
Steven Lipstein, President and CEO of BJC HealthCare--a $3 billion hospital system in St. Louis, Missouri--talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the economics of hospitals. They discuss pricing, the advantages and disadvantages of specialization in modern medical care, and culture and governance of non-profit hospitals vs. for-profit hospitals. At the end they talk about the positives and negatives of a national health board patterned after the Federal Reserve.