Senate report: How private equity ‘gutted’ dozens of U.S. hospitals | Hacker News Reader

Senate report: How private equity ‘gutted’ dozens of U.S. hospitals

washingtonpost.com

68 pointsdiogenes_atx13 comments

Many things convinced me to leave medical school, fifteen years ago, but a major professional consideration occurred during my emergency medicine rotation: I got into an ongoing, public, verbal dispute with the dean of our public US school (over a kickback he was receiving, at student expense).

(To lend credibility to my jaded recollection/POV, that semester we both left that medical school)

This experience with then-Dean, JD, opened my eyes to the cutthroat nature of a (even back then) massively-privatizing healthcare system... which I decided I couldn't morally/fiscally afford to become a part of. So thank you Dr. B... you helped me realize there are soooo many other ways to make money (honestly) helping people.

Based on this and similar headlines, it should be obvious by now that if you are a supplier to any business that is subsequently acquired by PE, you would be wise to demand cash on the barrelhead for sales to them.

And if you're a customer you need to start looking for alternatives.

I've thought about making a website that just trawls press releases and PE firm sites to detect when a company has been bought by PE and adds the company to a list on the site/sends a notification to folks who have signed up.

And if you’re a voter you need to vote for people who will push back on this.

People don’t typically have a lot of choice to hop around between hospitals and medical providers (which is, of course, a strategic win for said PE groups). Even if you have choice, a growing number of Americans do not.

Finally a problem set well suited to AI/LLMs that is actually useful to society! Interesting idea, I really like it!

And if you're a voter, don't let them pretend they contributed to society and allow them to clean up their image and grab power. There is a candidate in my local mayor race, Harrison Roday, that was touting "running a software company" before he started trying to do things that would make him electable. Turns out he was a finance bro, that used to the money to try and enshitify some Chrome extensions and small software that is already doing well. And all his backing is from out of state to run for mayor. Whats worse is that it actually took a decent amount of research to find out how crappy his previous life was. He was a big consideration for my vote until I dug because I was curious about what kind of software he worked on.

https://thirdsouth.capital/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/harrisonroday/

https://cfreports.elections.virginia.gov/Committee/Index/eea...

https://www.wtvr.com/news/local-news/meet-the-candidates-har...

Thanks for doing the research! Important to not leave any place for people like this to hide.

There are PEs that arent outright evil. Some are known for even saving companies.

They just don't end up doing anything newsworthy. Lol

The same Private Equity big heads then go on podcasts and dinners where they talk a great deal about "how we should make healthcare work for everybody".

It's usually testing the waters for running for office as governor or senator .

And people applaud them because the notion that greed is good is deeply entrenched in our brains it's ridiculous.

I’ve yet to hear of a single case of private equity actually making anything better.

As far as I can make out private equity means “we are not actually capable of successfully operating businesses, all we can do is extract the immediate value of businesses created by others”

Previous owners and shareholders potentially benefit if they receive a higher than market price for the company, and that's probably why they sell in the first place.

In theory struggling businesses can be turned around and made profitable.

In practice it seems to be about maximizing value extraction (often through large payments to the new owners) until the business shuts down, or simply by selling off the company's assets if they are worth more than the buyout price.

There is is a huge conflict of interest when a company is saddled with debt payable to its new owners, who will have strong incentives to pay that debt off (while paying themselves huge salaries and bonuses) even if it means killing the business, harming any remaining shareholders, employees, customers, etc.

It’s done to properly running businesses, often causing immense harm to others along the way, but the entire goal of the process is to leave an asset less bankrupt shell so no one can be sued.

It should be illegal, but because it’s a rich people destroying the lives of the poor, it’s a-ok.

https://archive.is/YllTP

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