Hospitals owned by private equity are harming patients, reports find

Last year, that same hospital posted 100 million in profits.

It is owned by a PE firm, and people wonder why appendectomies now cost $30k and simple ambulance rides are $15k.

c.f. elder care, child care, basic utilities.

If you own things that cannot be allowed to completely collapse, you can always dangle them over the edge and demand ransom.

I bet I could wander through these hospitals, chat to the staff and find ways to reduce cost and drastically reduce outcomes - given the numbers that are being quoted, it is not a challenging task. And I could probably set up a new hospital that did much better and is much popular with patients.

But I'm nobody special, so if I can see that every can. If it isn't happening, it is probably because setting up a good hospital is illegal. Working on making competition easier will get good results.

It is an English anguage report, not an engineering document.

In that context it is crystal clear what is meant by "private equity". It is completely different from "private ownership"

It is not a problem at all.

There is a similar issue with objecting to comparing out comes. The effects are not able to be finely measured,but the scale of the effects makes that a pointless quibble.

The entry of private equity into health businesses, rolling them up into large groupings then squeezing them for profit has been documented in many places. Objecting because the measurements and descriptions are not perfectly precise is not very good.

(It is in the "squeezing for profit" that the problem lies - incase you need some help)

With that said, would you talk about your experience in the PE hospitals handling insurance? As far as I know, one of the biggest drivers of consolation in hospitals and clinics is smaller operators struggling to deal with insurance. The second is the rising cost of equipment and specialties as far as I know.

> 29 states make it outright illegal for non-licensed persons to own or manage an entity that engages in the practice or medicine.

What is your point? Almost half of the states allow non-licensed persons to own or manage an entity.

A semi-rural hospital in California saw it's doctors unionizing because of the performance metrics it's management imposed on the doctors that threatened their licenses after they were bought out. Do not know if California is one of those states, but it shows the short sighted profit seeking nature that people do not want to find out about the place they had or going to have their surgeries at.

Another set of owners sees it as a short-term exercise in maximising profit at the expense of everything else.

Both may technically be "private equity". But when Private Equity is mentioned as a category, its typically the latter.

Of course comparing hospital results is hard, and no doubt you can cherry-pick metrics, and find anecdotes to support any position. So the story is whatever will get the most clicks.

But it's not hard to postulate, or support the idea, that when owners maximise for profit, health care comes second. That is the capitalism way.

Of course not all hospital owners are bad. A hospital may change hands multiple times via good owners. Sooner or later though an owner comes along with the goal of extracting the maximum value out of thd business, in the shortest possible time, regardless of the long-term consequences. Value likely accumulated over decades. At which point destruction is inevitable.

Most PE-owned companies do well. Do a paper search for median employment N years afterwards [1], net indebtedness 5+ years post, et cetera.

The problem is outcomes are negatively correlated with transaction size, so the more noticeable a deal the more likely it goes wrong. (There are also a few pirates in suits who go shockingly unpunished. But judging the cohort by them would be like judging tech by Chamath.)

[1] https://bfi.uchicago.edu/working-paper/the-economic-effects-...

I haven't been in that loop since before covid, but last I heard they were running at a loss for years because they couldn't keep staff. The conditions (and pay) were abhorrent. They also really, really liked to buy entire practices from the most experienced doctors. The practice got absorbed and died quietly while the doctor would very understandably retire early or move far away.

So, yes, they've maintained market share. But only by virtue of being a natural monopoly.

Sales were already going down and they responded by raising prices every time to make up for the lost revenue. The market itself was shrinking less than market share being lost.

Another product line I was less involved in pivoted direction and I guess is still doing OK.

In my view what makes a product like the new Edison Motors EV Semis revolutionary is not the technology but saying no to more money and leaving consumer surplus on the table for the benefit of their customers. It’s hard to say no to more money.

The US (like most modern mixed economies, as much of the developed world has moved beyond pure capitalism) has a few features (progressive income taxation, some taxation of property and luxuries, schemes of redistribution supported by those) to slightly mitigate that excess, but its still a central feature of the system on which elites rely and which they aggressively defend.

Because you refuse to employ full-time staff at reasonable salaries, thus encouraging more nurses to become "travelers" getting paid 5x+ on short-term, renegotiable contracts.

When un[der]appreciated nurses find out that their hospital sucks (after having literally been bled dry of funding, talent, and ability to provide actual healthcare), it is a quick revolt into contract nursing.

I LOVE NURSES. To make a nurse hate you, is not an impossible task dear Healthcare Admin.