… and there’s overwhelming evidence that Private Equity involvement in health care leads to bad patient outcomes.
intercst
7 Likes
I’m pretty sure the outcomes for the PE groups are good. And that is the essence of “supply side economics”: concentrate the most loot in the fewest hands.
Steve
5 Likes
Yes. I’ve added “patient outcomes” for clarity.
intercst
Huh, that’s weird. For profit health care seems to be working out for the rest of us.
intercst
3 Likes
“You gonna be on a hit list, you know that”.
When a patient with employer-based insurance goes under for surgery, the anesthesiologist’s fee is supposed to be determined by market forces. But what happens if one firm quietly buys out several anesthesiologists in the same city and then hikes the price of the procedure?
Such a scheme was allegedly implemented by the private-equity firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe and the company it created in 2012, U.S. Anesthesia Partners, according to a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit filed last year. It started by buying the largest practice in Houston and then making three further acquisitions, eventually expanding into other cities throughout the state of Texas.
Over the past decade, private equity has spent hundreds of billions of dollars acquiring healthcare businesses from emergency care to anesthesiology to nursing homes. Where private equity has gone, studies show, prices have tended to increase.
Such so-called rent-seeking behavior is a unique feature of the American healthcare system. Nowhere else in the world do so many healthcare dollars encounter so few mechanisms to limit profiteering .
Like bank robbers, private equity goes to where the money is.
4 Likes
You want to do something about inflation? Enforce the antitrust laws. This works much better than hiking interest rates.
intercst
4 Likes