What's happened is that the Fed govt. wanted to cut rebates for cataract operations citing the fact that technological advancements have decreased the time and complexity needed to do the operation - down to about half an hour. The issues are on the website "grannys not happy.com" or something like that. The fed. govt caved and cut it by less than they wanted to, i think down to 2/3 of what it was before. So yes, VGH margins should be getting squeezed but looking at the numbers the doctors are still signing up and the operations are still taking place etc profits are good on last reports - from a medical perspective i think they have a good model of hub/spoke type centres with good synergies... but eye docs can earn far far far more than they earn in VGH so i think they must top them up with just heaps of stock.
VGH Price at posting:
66.0¢ Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held