Name: See How This Health Care CEO Puts Customer Value First
Uploaded: 2018-01-04
Duration: 4 min 59 s
Description: Jose Almeida of Baxter International thinks affordable healthcare should be accessible to all.

The products and the technologies to save and sustain life of our patient. Our success is how to deliver better healthcare value to the patient. Joe, not long ago you were talking to Wall Street analysts and you told them that Baxter is interested in doing more mergers and acquisitions, and you actually said you have an MNA team. Showing you deals. What kind of businesses do you want to get into? We like injectables. We like dialysis. We also like acute care, renal care, which is the hospital part of our business. So any company that is within our areas of business. As you know, many hospital chains have been consolidating, and many of your competitors are getting bigger through other acquisitions. How important is it these days to be a big player in health care? Size alone does not provide you for better business opportunities. Because you still have to be the best in each one of the therapeutic areas that you have. The hospital is in a different situation. As they consolidate, they become more efficient. There is a significant amount of overhead cost when hospitals are Conglomerated in big cities, or not enough hospitals in rural areas. So the merger of hospitals have a different purpose getting healthcare product companies like Cowers. Let me ask it to you this way. I know you're a deal maker, and you have a talent for spotting great deals. And you also have Daniel Lobe. As a major shareholder in Baxter who also happens to be a very aggressive activist investor. To what extent is he pressuring you to do something big and then in that sense I mean a major deal. Dan and third point have been great owners of Baxter. I think what Dan wants at the end of the day is that you create value for your shareholders through different ways of doing business. It's all about allocation of capital. It can't go 100 % into acquisitions. We've got to return some money to your shareholders. And the combination of both is what he's interested Let's talk a little bit about Obama Care. As you know Washington lawmakers will soon be voting on some kind of a plan that will repeal parts of the affordable care act to free up more money for tax cuts. How do these kinds of developments, what do they mean for a big health care company like [ UNKNOWN ] Health care is about eulozation And cost efficiency. So if we add more people to the system and we cover more people, you treat more people. That impacts the business on a positive side and is good for American people. It's good for companies. It's good for the providers. We need to be careful when we start moving money around. That we don't take people who are very sick off the system and take people who have preexisting conditions of the system. Because they need to be treated eventually they will be treated and somebody's going to pay for it. It's just not a place that you can start moving money around so the impact to any healthcare company is put the money behind. Insuring the lives and covering what people need, so the system can provide that at a reasonable cost and efficiency. Mm- hm, well, as the CEO of a major healthcare company, what would you like to see happen? We'd like to see that [ BLANK_AUDIO ] The healthcare being provided to as many people as we can through a reasonable cost without a lot of bureaucracy. So I think we have good insurance companies that should go across state lines. We should be able to do coverage for people in a reasonable way. So as a C. E. O. I would like to see the American people with the coverage that they can afford in the care that they deserve. And let me ask you also this, as a C. E. O. of a major health care company what don't you want to see happen. We don't want to see happening is that only the most privileged or the people who are employed by major corporations are the ones that have the best healthcare coverage. People in general, disease is not discriminatory. People need to have healthcare that is accessible and cost effective. So as a CEO For my employees and for the people who you support we'd like to see that happen. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

See How This Health Care CEO Puts Customer Value First

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Jose Almeida of Baxter International thinks affordable healthcare should be accessible to all.