Private Equity Destroying America

I saw this video this morning. Not that it surprises me or is something I wasn’t aware of, its still maddening regardless. I’ll probably keep this going to share similar stories as private equity (and monopolies/cartels for that matter) strip mine every nook and cranny if the American economy.

 

Meant to include my take on it, which is that private equity has no place in the hospital market. And broadly speaking, we should legislate private equity out of many industries or at least pass laws against all the things they do that anyone with common sense knows should be illegal.

 

But free market blah blah.


Same with them snatching up housing markets.

 

free market isn’t what is causing this.

 

Need to address why things are in such dire straits they have to go to the private equity market in the first place. As shitty as it is, most of these places probably simply close without it. Saying they can't be bought doesn't address the issue.

 

Pretending like key tenets of a free market exist in a framework of imminent death, or acute pain/suffering certainly has something to do with how we got here. Saying "they'd probably shut down" when so many already are and so many people already have no or insufficient access sure sounds like fighting over who gets to stand on the bow of the ship as it sinks.

 

Rural hospitals are a mess amongst themselves. Our current healthcare structure is killing them.

 

If you want rural America to have zero hospitals then say they can't be bought. Some can't be worse than none. I don't see any way hospitals stay open when they hemmorage money unless the federal government runs them as they are the only entity that don't have to worry about how much something costs.

In my area of Alabama across 23 counties there is essentially one hospital system owning about 15 locations. 20 years ago there were 10 hospital systems running those 15 locations. If it wasn't for that consolidation there would probably be 5 locations across the 23 counties as the single system couldn't absorb the financial losses in one community with the profits from another.

Short of a VA for all system I don't see how profit/loss can be ignored. And even in such a system there would be a lot less places to go for care.

 

If I want rural areas to not have hospitals, all I have to do is wait.

 

Most have been bought by Vanderbilt or HPG. There are very few stand alones anymore. Vanderbilt bought the Tennova hospitals in rural Tn

 

To be clear I know there’s not an easy answer here and hospitals (especially in rural areas) are a disaster even without private equity. But the solution isn’t and never will be private equity.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying ALL private equity is bad. I’m saying simply that on the whole private equity is hollowing out a new industry every day and frequently the means of doing so should obviously be illegal or are already illegal but are ignored because we don’t prosecute that type of crime anymore. And even if we did the people who would have been largely responsible for exposing the malfeasance don’t exist anymore, partially because private equity saw how much money could be made from raping and pillaging American newsrooms.

 

Not arguing or disagreeing with anyone, but a lot of the stuff mentioned in the video is pretty common across all types of hospitals. Every single one is trying to "do more with less."

 

https://tnnewswire.com/2022/03/25/company-aims-to-buy-restore-rural-hospitals-in-tennessee/

 

I'm saying people are complaining about the symptom. We have to fix the problem, and outside of a fully run govenment system I don't see a solution.

 

Lookie there at the hometown being mentioned.

Also very familiar with the Houston County one through a former job. As bad as that article describes it, it's worse.

 

I don’t know the solution for fixing our disastrous healthcare system. Even if there was one I’m not sure those pulling the strings would allow it.

But private equity is a different story. It’s not nearly as hard of a fix. And I’m afraid of where we are in 10 or 20 years if we don’t put a stop to the worst of it.

 

My guess with no inside knowledge is that private equity generally only has a bite at the apple when everyone else has said no thanks, I doubt they are offering more than pennies on the dollar anyways. If that's the case, under the current system, it's private equity or closure.

The only 2 things that can run at a loss ad infinitum is a government program or a billionaire's vanity project. Even charities have to cover the bills.

 

Not Private Equity acquisition per se, but over here in NC, rural hospitals are struggling/disappearing. I remember when the ACA/Medicaid expansion whoohaah came out. Our State government refused it and we had Republican mayors in small towns begging them to accept it. The main reason, their rural hospitals were closing without it.

Imo, prisons and hospitals should not be run by profit-driven corporations.

 

In my experience, Private Equity has a bite when they think good money is to be made. Period.

How much does it cost? How much revenue? When the revenue misses the forecast, the reduce expense lever is pulled.
Quality of care is only in the equation if it increases the revenue by their predetermined multiplier above expense.

 

This part isn’t really true. Rural hospitals may be in dire straits regardless, but private equity is into just about everything now. Again I’m not trying to paint with too broad a brush here, there are plenty of PE firms acquiring companies to run them, improve them and sell them. But far too often they take over companies that are profitable and viable, suck every last penny out and leave in their wake a dead company crippled by debt, debt the company didn’t even need for operations.