Private Equity

How Private Equity Conquered America

March 2, 2024 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. Resistance Report Finance and the Economy, Mergers, Private, Private Equity

Private equity firms are buying up the US economy and stripping it for parts. From healthcare to education, utilities, and more, massive firms like Blackstone and the Carlyle Group have acquired vast holdings across critical industries essential to the health and well-being of everyday people. Instead of seeking to make these ventures more profitable, private equity firms are more likely to orchestrate to bleed their assets for short-term gains—even if those assets are universities, hospitals, or nursing homes. Gretchen Morgenson, author of These Are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs—and Wrecks—America, returns to The Chris Hedges Report.

Massachusetts Wakes Up To A Hospital Nightmare

January 31, 2024 Maureen Tkacik, The American Prospect. Educate! Health Care, Hospitals, Liberal class, Massachusetts, Private Equity

The group of fresh medical school grads knew something wasn’t right with Steward Health Care when they showed up in Dorchester, Massachusetts to start their residencies in Carney Hospital’s inaugural family medicine residency class during the summer of 2014 and learned the president who had recruited them had already been fired. Soon afterward, a Steward administrator admitted the new family medicine clinic and the pediatric ward they had toured on their recruitment visit were never actually opening, and that the nearby hospital at which residents were supposed to learn how to deliver babies was being shuttered entirely.

We Deserve Medicare For All; What We Get Is Medicare For Wall Street

January 5, 2024 Les Leopold, Common Dreams. Strategize! Health Care, Medicare for all, Private Equity, Wall Street

The United States health care system—more costly than any on earth—will become ever more so as Wall Street increasingly extracts money from it. Private equity funds own approximately 9% of all private hospitals and 30% of all proprietary for-profit hospitals, including 34% that serve rural populations. They’ve also bought up nursing homes and doctors’ practices and are investing more year by year. The net impact? Medical costs to the government and to patients have gone up while patients have suffered more adverse medical results, according to two current studies. The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) recently published a paper which found: Private equity acquisition was associated with increased hospital-acquired adverse events.

My Life In Corporate Medicine

August 16, 2023 Stephanie Arnold and Maureen Tkacik, The American Prospect. Educate! Corporatism, Doctors, Health Care, Private Equity

I started medical school in 2011, full of idealism and optimism over the promise of Obamacare. But the health care system has gotten progressively worse every year that I’ve worked in it, probably because private equity firms keep acquiring new corners. The urgent care was an exception, it was part of a family business, founded by an emergency physician who actually cares about employees. When COVID came, they didn’t lay off a single full-timer even when volume fell off a cliff, probably in part because he was a big Trumper and was convinced the pandemic would “blow over” by the summer of 2020.

Building Grassroots Power For National Universal Health Care

August 7, 2023 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. Podcast - Clearing The FOG Congress, Health Care, Medicare for all, Private Equity

Profiteers are taking over health care in the United States and running it into the ground - firing health professionals and closing hospitals. Dr. Ana Malinow, a lead organizer of the group, National Single Payer, fears we are witnessing the demise of a model national insurance, Medicare, as the 58th anniversary of its passage was celebrated on July 31. Dr. Malinow joins Clearing the FOG to discuss the state of health care in the US. She provides a strong critique of state legislative efforts and the two Medicare for All bills in the House and Senate, HR 3421 and S 1655. Dr. Malinow outlines what people are doing across the country to build grassroots power to win a national health insurance, Medicare for All, or a national health system.

Labor Organizers Launch New Model For The Fight Against Private Equity

May 13, 2023 Derek Seidman, Truthout. Create! Labor Movement, Private Equity, Wall Street, Worker Rights

On May Day, a small group of labor advocates and workers weaved through midtown Manhattan, stopping at the shiny corporate headquarters of several firms with names like KKR, Sycamore Partners, Apollo Global Management, BC Partners and Roark Capital Group. Most people don’t recognize these names, or if they do, know very little about them. But these are some of the wealthiest and most influential firms on Wall Street, behemoths within the ultra-powerful but opaque financial sector known as private equity — the arm of Wall Street that oversees trillions in assets and specializes in buying out, restructuring and selling off privately owned businesses to turn a big profit.

Private Equity Is Out Of Control And Looting America

May 3, 2023 Lynn Parramore, Scheer Post. Educate! Book Review, Capitalism, Economic crisis, Private Equity, Wall Street

One of my favorite NYC restaurants had become understaffed and dirty – a shadow of its former self. I learned an interesting fact: a couple of years ago, a private equity firm had bought the local chain. The same type of firm that had already ruined my beloved neighborhood grocer. The kind that was rapidly taking over vet clinics, dental offices, and gyms on every block – though you wouldn’t know it unless you did some sleuthing. Price hikes, deteriorating conditions, and poor service — along with a certain slickness of marketing — could be signs that ownership of a business you count on has transferred to one or more firms in a rapidly-expanding Wall Street industry.

ER Doctors Call Private Equity Staffing Practices Illegal, Seek To Ban Them

December 23, 2022 Bernard Wolfson, Wisconsin Examiner. Resist! Doctors, Health Care, Private Equity, Worker Rights

A group of emergency physicians and consumer advocates in multiple states are pushing for stiffer enforcement of decades-old statutes that prohibit the ownership of medical practices by corporations not owned by licensed doctors. Thirty-three states plus the District of Columbia have rules on their books against the so-called corporate practice of medicine. But over the years, critics say, companies have successfully sidestepped bans on owning medical practices by buying or establishing local staffing groups that are nominally owned by doctors and restricting the physicians’ authority so they have no direct control. These laws and regulations, which started appearing nearly a century ago, were meant to fight the commercialization of medicine, maintain the independence and authority of physicians, and prioritize the doctor-patient relationship over the interests of investors and shareholders.

When Private Equity Becomes Your Landlord

February 14, 2022 Heather Vogell, Propublica. Educate! California, Housing, Landlords, Private Equity

Daniel Cooper could barely afford a tiny apartment at the 13-story Olume building in downtown San Francisco. But the expansive view from the roof deck captivated him. Raised in a small city in Kentucky, Cooper was struck by the grandeur of the skyline before him, from the soaring heights of Salesforce tower, San Francisco’s largest skyscraper, to the gleaming gold cupolas atop St. Joseph’s Church, one of the city’s historic landmarks. The sense of opportunity he felt when looking out on his new hometown helped convince the software engineer to become one of the glassy new building’s first tenants in 2016. He joined Mévis Mousbé, a driver for a ride-sharing service who had been the first to move in.

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