Opinion Private equity firms are gnawing away at U.S. health care

A contrary article is at https://reason.com/2024/01/05/the-new-york-times-misrepresen....

'The study's strongest finding shows that lives were saved in hospitals acquired by private equity—the opposite of what Kannan expected to find. Patient mortality, the most important measure, dropped a statistically significant 9 percent in the study group, which represents nearly 500 lives saved.

The paper could have been headlined "Patient Mortality Fell After Private Equity Firms Bought Hospitals," except JAMA might not have published it, The New York Times certainly wouldn't have bothered to write it up, and Common Dreams couldn't have run with the headline, "We Deserve Medicare for All, But What We Get Is Medicare for Wall Street." So the study authors fell over themselves to explain this finding away. They theorized, without any evidence, that maybe private equity hospitals routinely transfer out patients who are near death. Though they raise legitimate reasons for skepticism that private equity acquisition saved patient lives, they apply equally to the negative findings that are trumpeted both in the study and the news write-ups.'