• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

PNHP

  • Home
  • Contact PNHP
  • Join PNHP
  • Donate
  • PNHP Store
  • About PNHP
    • Mission Statement
    • Board of Directors
    • National Office Staff
    • Speakers Bureau
    • Local Chapters
    • Students for a National Health Program
    • Contact Us
    • Privacy Policy
  • About Single Payer
    • What is Single Payer?
      • Policy Details
      • FAQs
      • History of Health Reform
      • Información en Español
    • How do we pay for it?
    • Physicians’ Proposal
      • Full Proposal
      • Supplemental Materials
      • Media Coverage
    • The Medicare for All Act of 2025
  • Take Action
    • Moral Injury and Distress
    • Medical Society Resolutions
    • Recruit Colleagues
    • Schedule a Grand Rounds
    • Letters to the Editor
    • Lobby Visits
    • Organizing in Red Districts
  • Heal Medicare
    • HealMedicare.org
    • Sign our Petition
    • Take our Survey
    • Medicare Disadvantage
    • Stop REACH
  • Kitchen Table Campaign
    • Medicare Disadvantage
    • Maternal Mortality
    • Mental Health Care
    • Health Care Voters Guide
    • COVID-19 Endangers Health Workers
    • COVID-19 Exacerbates Racial Inequities
    • Public Health Emergencies
    • Rural Health Care
    • Racial Health Inequities
    • Surprise Billing
  • Latest News
    • Sign up for e-alerts
    • Medicare Advantage harms report
    • Members in the news
    • Health Justice Monitor
    • Articles of Interest
    • Latest Research
    • For the Press
  • Member Resources
    • 2024 Annual Meeting Materials
    • Newsletter
    • Slideshows
    • Materials & Handouts
    • Kitchen Table Campaign
    • COVID-19 Response
      • Why we Need Medicare for All
      • PNHP’s 8-point plan
      • New Study: Perils and Possibilities
      • Emergency COVID-19 Legislation
      • Kitchen Table Toolkit
      • Take Action on COVID-19
      • Telling your COVID-19 story
      • PNHP members in the news
    • Events Calendar
    • Webinars
    • Film Room
    • Join or renew your membership

Health Justice Monitor

Exposing the Private Equity Threat

Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Summary: Massive private equity investment has substantially transformed US health care. A highly respected health news service, KHN, highlights the trend and its downsides. The Private Equity Stakeholder Project documents these investments and resulting patient care problems. Single payer would correct the skewed health system dynamics that favor private equity.


Patients For Profit: How Private Equity Hijacked Health Care, How Private Equity Is Investing in Health Care: A Video Primer, KHN (Kaiser Health News), October 26, 2022, by Hannah Norman


See video (3 minutes)



“A common move is to ‘roll up’ a string of businesses under one more established ‘platform’ and find new ways to make money. But as a result, patient care can suffer.” (2:25)


Private Equity Stakeholder Project: Healthcare


Private equity increasingly makes up a substantial portion of investment in U.S. healthcare companies, touching virtually every sector of the industry, and is expected to continue to grow. Asset managers have record levels of available capital earmarked for healthcare investment; as of 2019, private equity firms had $29.2 billion in capital waiting to be invested in healthcare.

This is despite the fact that private equity investment in healthcare companies carries substantial risk to patients, workers, and investors. The typical private equity investment playbook—pursuing outsized returns over short time horizons while using high levels of debt—may lead to behavior that jeopardizes patient care.

For example, private equity-owned healthcare companies have seen the following issues:

  • Reduced staffing, or filling beds without adequate staffing ratios
  • Over-reliance on unlicensed staff to reduce labor costs
  • Failure to provide adequate training
  • Pressure on providers to provide unnecessary and potentially costly services
  • Violation of regulations required for participants in Medicare and Medicaid such as anti-kickback provisions, creating litigation risk

PESP has studied the impacts of private equity investment in key healthcare sectors, including safety net hospitals, behavioral health, nursing homes, prisons and detention centers and dental care. We have also written about the practice of taking debt-funded dividends from healthcare companies; private equity’s role in medical debt collection; and the relationship of private equity ownership and Medicare fraud. PESP also tracks private equity healthcare acquisitions on a monthly basis, highlighting notable transactions in a variety of sectors.


Comment:

By Jim Kahn, M.D., M.P.H.

Private equity (PE) is a menace to US health care, extracting profits and leaving care underfunded and patients at risk. HJM has written frequently about specific PE issues among providers (eg, here), capitated “direct contracting” (including ACO REACH) by PE and other corporations in Medicare (eg, here), and the dangerous growing corporate ownership of providers. The broad PE critique offered by today’s sources is important.

The rising prices that plague US healthcare reflect growing provider power through corporate acquisitions and mergers – often driven by PE. Massive private health insurers are only too happy to pass along the high costs and associated high profits to payers (CMS and private employers, mainly) and patients (in the form of punishing cost-sharing and financial barriers to care). Private equity is turbo-charged exploitation enabled by our complex, fragmented, and chaotic insurance landscape.

How will single payer help? It will correct the distorted power imbalance, with a global payer that can effectively negotiate prices with large provider groups, reducing costs. It will simultaneously empower small providers (remember solo practice?) by treating them the same as the largest providers. It will simplify billing administration for physicians, removing the incentive to sell to corporations to shed the annoyingly complex paperwork. Many providers and patients prefer a non-corporate setting with greater autonomy and personalization, and will have that choice.

In short, single payer will unravel and replace the play space for aggressive corporate profit-taking. In so doing, it will support smaller providers and, of course, patients. Investor gains will yield to equitable, accessible, and affordable health care.

P.S. See the first comment — additional resources from NY PNHP

http://healthjusticemonitor.org…


Stay informed! Subscribe to the McCanne Health Justice Monitor to receive regular policy updates via email, and be sure to follow them on Twitter @HealthJustMon.

Primary Sidebar

Recent Health Justice Monitor

  • Health Insurance in South Korea
  • Private Equity Endangers Patients
  • Medicare for All Act Reintroduced in Congress
  • US Mortality High & Strongly Linked to Wealth
  • Stand-Up for Simple Health Insurance
  • About PNHP
    • Mission Statement
    • Board of Directors
    • National Office Staff
    • Speakers Bureau
    • Local Chapters
    • Students for a National Health Program
    • Contact Us
    • Privacy Policy
  • About Single Payer
    • What is Single Payer?
      • Policy Details
      • FAQs
      • History of Health Reform
      • Información en Español
    • How do we pay for it?
    • Physicians’ Proposal
      • Full Proposal
      • Supplemental Materials
      • Media Coverage
    • The Medicare for All Act of 2025
  • Take Action
    • Moral Injury and Distress
    • Medical Society Resolutions
    • Recruit Colleagues
    • Schedule a Grand Rounds
    • Letters to the Editor
    • Lobby Visits
    • Organizing in Red Districts
  • Heal Medicare
    • HealMedicare.org
    • Sign our Petition
    • Take our Survey
    • Medicare Disadvantage
    • Stop REACH
  • Kitchen Table Campaign
    • Medicare Disadvantage
    • Maternal Mortality
    • Mental Health Care
    • Health Care Voters Guide
    • COVID-19 Endangers Health Workers
    • COVID-19 Exacerbates Racial Inequities
    • Public Health Emergencies
    • Rural Health Care
    • Racial Health Inequities
    • Surprise Billing
  • Latest News
    • Sign up for e-alerts
    • Medicare Advantage harms report
    • Members in the news
    • Health Justice Monitor
    • Articles of Interest
    • Latest Research
    • For the Press
  • Member Resources
    • 2024 Annual Meeting Materials
    • Newsletter
    • Slideshows
    • Materials & Handouts
    • Kitchen Table Campaign
    • COVID-19 Response
      • Why we Need Medicare for All
      • PNHP’s 8-point plan
      • New Study: Perils and Possibilities
      • Emergency COVID-19 Legislation
      • Kitchen Table Toolkit
      • Take Action on COVID-19
      • Telling your COVID-19 story
      • PNHP members in the news
    • Events Calendar
    • Webinars
    • Film Room
    • Join or renew your membership

Footer

  • About PNHP
    • Mission Statement
    • Board of Directors
    • National Office Staff
    • Speakers Bureau
    • Local Chapters
    • Students for a National Health Program
    • Contact Us
    • Privacy Policy
  • About Single Payer
    • What is Single Payer?
      • Policy Details
      • FAQs
      • History of Health Reform
      • Información en Español
    • How do we pay for it?
    • Physicians’ Proposal
      • Full Proposal
      • Supplemental Materials
      • Media Coverage
    • The Medicare for All Act of 2025
  • Take Action
    • Moral Injury and Distress
    • Medical Society Resolutions
    • Recruit Colleagues
    • Schedule a Grand Rounds
    • Letters to the Editor
    • Lobby Visits
    • Organizing in Red Districts
  • Heal Medicare
    • HealMedicare.org
    • Sign our Petition
    • Take our Survey
    • Medicare Disadvantage
    • Stop REACH
  • Kitchen Table Campaign
    • Medicare Disadvantage
    • Maternal Mortality
    • Mental Health Care
    • Health Care Voters Guide
    • COVID-19 Endangers Health Workers
    • COVID-19 Exacerbates Racial Inequities
    • Public Health Emergencies
    • Rural Health Care
    • Racial Health Inequities
    • Surprise Billing
  • Latest News
    • Sign up for e-alerts
    • Medicare Advantage harms report
    • Members in the news
    • Health Justice Monitor
    • Articles of Interest
    • Latest Research
    • For the Press
  • Member Resources
    • 2024 Annual Meeting Materials
    • Newsletter
    • Slideshows
    • Materials & Handouts
    • Kitchen Table Campaign
    • COVID-19 Response
      • Why we Need Medicare for All
      • PNHP’s 8-point plan
      • New Study: Perils and Possibilities
      • Emergency COVID-19 Legislation
      • Kitchen Table Toolkit
      • Take Action on COVID-19
      • Telling your COVID-19 story
      • PNHP members in the news
    • Events Calendar
    • Webinars
    • Film Room
    • Join or renew your membership
©2025 PNHP