Selling out your non-profit hospital to an investment firm that turns around, sells out the physical property the hospitals are in for 1 billion+ and signs a 30 year lease on said properly. Firm banks the profit from the real estate deal, then resells the business that's now saddled with way more debt than it ever had in the form of leases back to the CEO they bought it from to begin with for peanuts. It's really the fleecing of America. Sure someone made a ton of money but now the once "community" hospitals are left in horrible shape.
I really wished the US would have addressed the high-costs of healthcare versus trying to get everyone insurance. The cycle will continue and it feeds this pattern of poor behavior by hospitals. Same thing with education. There's too many "admins" in the mix.
When you have a system in which customers don't actually pay for the products and services they use, it is unsurprising that quality goes downhill.
A private equity firm's incentives are almost always not aligned with what's best for the customer of the company and its people.<p>I've witnessed a P/E firm gut a pretty big firm, ship all the tech work to India, layoff most of the SV employees for quick "value extraction".
I hear that private equity doesn't always result in the 'load with debt, take profits, walk away' playbook, but many of the famous examples (Sears, Toys R Us, this article) seem to all be of that playbook. I wonder what kind of regulation could be created to prevent this activity while preserving good management and not overly penalizing bad luck or bad timing.<p>Something like a time bound window were the principle beneficiaries have to repay their profits extracted, with actual federal prison time as a likely possibility. Wouldn't take too many examples of prosecuting the most egregious folks before the entire sector cooled.<p>The counter argument is that this action accelerated the 'creative destruction' that capitalism is known for - where weak companies are harvested by the an apex predator for profits before being committed to bones. But I think that ignores the real societal impact of some of these, specifically in this example where marginalized groups have lower access to health care and standards. If we can eminent domain private property to give to private groups (because the extra taxes and jobs are a public good), couldn't we also take a stronger hand in regulating some of these private equity actions because of the destruction of public good (and taxes and jobs, etc?)
For profit hospitals are disgusting.<p>There’s a reason they never show up in top quality of care lists.<p>The fact that most for profits ravage safety net hospitals is even more disgusting.
No conversation about United States healthcare should continue without acknowledgement of Regulatory Capture through legal bribery.<p><a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/top-spenders?cycle=a" rel="nofollow">https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/top-spenders?cy...</a><p>The healthcare industry protects it's employees and owners at the expense of the customer.<p>There's nothing capitalistic here, there's nothing scientific about having monopoly control over healthcare services (Physicians, pharmacists).<p>As a note, I am shooting myself in the foot discussing this, my wife makes 200k/yr as a doctor of Physical Therapy running her own clinic. And her cartel isn't even on that list.
Makes me want to find an aggressive lawyer and take down some private equity firms.<p>When any organization starts to bleed a large complex human embedded asset, it is gentle at first as they wait for being caught with their destructive life altering behavior. As they continue unexposed they get more bold and sloppy. Today, in American society, it is a free for all raping of any exposed asset servicing any income pool less than the 2%'s protected assets.<p>I believe this is class warfare, and would be very interested in joining with like minded individuals with peer legal abilities to my advanced technology skills. Let's expose some financial abuse.