The short-term profit-seeking models that drive the private equity industry are fundamentally incompatible with quality healthcare … and private equity has been increasingly buying up huge swaths of the healthcare sector.

Private equity’s abuses sector are becoming more and more obvious these days, and can often be deadly: patients harmed by reduced staffing ratios, increased costs for all of us from higher levels of fraudulent claims, exacerbation of structural racism already present in our healthcare system, and communities deprived of essential resources as healthcare facilities are shut down.

Our groundbreaking report from last summer – Doctored by Wall Street – recommended multiple steps that executive branch agencies can take to end the siphoning of public healthcare resources for private profit, which has been increasingly eroding the quality of care and exacerbating patient suffering nationwide.

The Biden Administration seems to have been listening – and we recently collaborated with 95 other consumer, public-interest, and healthcare reform on a detailed response to a Request for Information from three federal agencies (Department of Labor, Department of Health & Humane Services and the Federal Trade Commission) seeking public comment on the issue.

Our official comment responding to the request for information provides analysis and recommendations in four key areas:

• Consolidation, where private equity “roll-ups” are designed to consolidate providers in a market; drive up costs, and generate greater profits;
• The common “loot and strip” practices of private equity firms applied to the healthcare sector including high leverage, sale-leaseback of real estate, debt-funded dividends, and outrageous management and advisory fees;
• Notably large private equity transactions in various healthcare sectors such as emergency departments, durable medical equipment, dental practices, and hospice care; and
• Needed government actions to change the incentives that attract private equity to healthcare and lead to spiraling prices, diminished access, and declining quality -- including unnecessary illness, injury, and death.

Sign on as a grassroots co-sponsor of our letter and urge the strongest possible regulatory crackdowns on private equity’s attempts to take over and monopolize our healthcare system.