As a public company you file financial results in generally accepted accounting principles. Will moving to international standards be a headache?
It will. First, you need to train everyone on your staff — the accounting staff and the finance group. But you also will have to discuss the impact with other executives within the company so everyone understands how the financial results will change and the effect that could have. For example, when you make a capital investment under GAAP, it's recorded as an amortized cost. But under international standards, you can mark-to-market the value of your facilities. That may affect our real estate investments.
Will there be information-technology issues if you start filing under international financial reporting standards?
Yes, we will need to change our systems because they don't support IFRS. We are in the process of long-term planning and we are looking very closely at new applications. We'll have a finance person and IT person work on this together.
If President Obama's health plan goes through, will it affect Triple-S?
That's an interesting question because, for example, Puerto Rico doesn't get exactly the same Medicaid benefits as the states. There is a block allocation, and a formula to determine how much each state will get. That formula is not used for Puerto Rico. We get a fixed block of funding from Medicaid that is lower than the state formula. So I think it will be a matter of our governor probably asking Obama whether Puerto Rico can be a part of that program - and trying to get more funding for our Medicaid program. But it's hard to say because right now the plan is still just a general idea of where the president wants to go.
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