Kent J. Thiry - DaVita, Inc.
Management
I'd like to finish with just a few words on each of our businesses. In Kidney Care, we are in a period of greater policy uncertainties, and is the norm, if you look back over the last 10 years or so, not unique, but more than the norm. And so, while we expect a continuation of the positive operating performances we have had for several years, given the policy uncertainty, we could in fact do better or worse than the outlook that we've discussed today and earlier this year. The big and obvious reasons are all the uncertainties surrounding what the new administration and the new Congress will do with respect to the Affordable Care Act. In addition, we do know that despite the immensely favorable Federal Court ruling on the IFR, nonetheless the debate over what will happen with charitable premium assistance, not just in Kidney Care, but in all spheres of American healthcare. In addition to the debates about benefit, design, and benefit implementation, we'll continue to play out over the next couple of years as much as all of us would love clarity to emerge sooner. And it is worthwhile to note that there are also upsides embedded in this uncertainty with respect to issues like MSP, Medicare secondary provision, accelerating our patients' right to choose MA plans, the patient act enabling us to do global capitation in centers throughout the country et cetera. And as we often point to the Kidney Care platform in the United States remains very strong. The international business segment, we continue to grow at a good clip and progress towards reasonable scale and we continue to expect that we will breakeven in 2018 in international dialysis for our current footprint of countries, hopefully a platform emerging with a lot of downstream growth potential. And then lastly, the DaVita Medical Group, DMG, which has proven to be a remarkably resilient platform with capabilities improving each and every quarter at this point. You probably noted that without the non-cash amortization there would have been a nice uptick in our thoughts around the operating income trajectory. And in addition, there is growing MA support, Medicare Advantage support, in the administration and in Congress and we hope that translates into a better rate environment in the next few years than the very, very, very difficult one we've had the last few years. And lastly, at the enterprise level, we'll make the typical obvious, but nonetheless worth noting point that our cash flows are strong, steady and hopefully we've demonstrated reasonable thoughtfulness in how we've deployed that wonderful shareholder asset and we'll continue to do so. Operator, could we please open the line for Q&A?