re: Apparently private equity is buying up small hospitals in LA

Try that free market capitalism in a small town

My wife did her internship at a Catholic hospital. They had a convent on site, and those nuns ran a tight, and at the same time a compassionate ship.

The head nun insured that "the floors squeaked", no carpet and I'm sure the accounting books were as clean. I enjoyed spending time with the older nuns. Planting gardens, removing brush and weeding. Nice people.

The nuns are gone and they are a member of Trinity Health. A non-profit.

$2,951,758: Richard Gilfillan, Director, CEO (through 6/19)
$2,475,859: Michael Slubowski, President and Chief Operating Officer
$2,372,507: Barbara Walters, Former Key Employee
$1,786,121: Paul Neumann, Secy, EVP, Chief Legal Officer (through 8/18)
$1,748,458: Daniel Roth, EVP, Chief Clinical Officer
$1,732,742: Benjamin Carter, Treasurer, EVP, CFO
$1,694,878: Sally Jeffcoat, EVP, Growth, Strategy, and Innovation
$1,522,588: Robert Casalou, President and CEO, Michigan Region
$1,393,553: Mark Fromison, Former Key Employee
$1,297,537: Marcus Shipley, SVP, Chief Information Officer
$1,284,936: Nora Triola, Former Key Employee
$1,272,923: John Rodis, President, St Francis Hospital
$1,271,691: Susan Croushore, President, Mercy Health of SEPA
$1,270,106: Edmund Hodge, EVP, Chief HR Officer
$1,154,276: Roger Spoelman, LUHS Int CEO through 10/18, SVP 10-12/18
$1,102,611: Cynthia Clemence, Asst Treasurer, SVP, Operations CFO
$1,040,533: John Capasso, EVP, Continuing Care
$ 991,877: Paul Conlon, Former Key Employee
$ 929,480: Louis Fierens II, EVP, Administrative Services
$ 880,687: Michael Hemsley, Asst Secy, Deputy General Counsel
$ 839,899: Linda Ross, Secy, EVP, Chief Legal Officer (as of 9/18)
$ 831,230: Paul Harkaway, Former Key Employee, Chief Acct Care Dev Officer
4 800,818: Michael Holper, Former Key Employee, SVP, Int/Audit SERVICES
$ 709,165: Cynthia Fry, Former Key Employee, SVP Rev Excellence
$ 707,288: Michael Finegan, Former Key Employee, Pres Accute Care, St Peters
$ 567,365: Philip Boyle, Former Key Employee, SVP, Mission
$ 294,490: Joshua Moore, Asst Secy, VP Managing Counsel

LINK

Trinity in 2023.

LINK

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The goal of private equity is as follows:
1) Buy a business and load it up with debt
2) Take a ton of cash out
3) Trim expeneses to the absolute bone, and usually beyond
4) Starve the business of resources / spending as much as possible, but not so much as to cause it to shut down, so they can flip it in a few years and make a ton of money and pass it on to the next group, or
5) If they go too deep and end up putting it out of business, just sell off the assets and get the remaining cash out that way.

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Then have done a good job of this with Glenwood. Now everyone just goes to St. Francis.

Well I agree elites hate people living self-sufficient lives in rural America, the health care available to rural communities insight and day better than what it used to be.

I need a rx refill? No more driving over an hour one way to go to the doctor. I send a message or do a 10 minute video chat and I get the ahit in the mail.

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There are few endeavors more poorly suited to endure the excesses of unregulated (or lightly regulated) capitalism than healthcare. And that's why a lot of aspects of it have slowly become more government dominated. Medicare is pretty popular in this country and for good reason.
But healthcare overall in the US is WAY more expensive than other industrialized countries and outcomes are generally outside the top 10-15.

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For profit healthcare is very regulated relative to any other for profit business in this country. VERY regulated. I have to go through 10 regulatory attorneys to sell a handful of urgent care centers for a client and 5x that on hospital level transactions. And when it comes to laws in actual medicine, they are endless. Then on top of that, being successful in healthcare outside of some smaller examples, is completely dependent on the government agreeing to pay you for your services.

I have healthcare clients in Europe, Australia and in the US. The outcomes aren't worse because our system is worse, they just appear worse because this isn’t apples to apples.

The very wealthy in these other countries pay exorbitant money for private healthcare that most of the population will never be able to access. The people who are on the government healthcare have months, sometimes over a year, waiting time for medical care/surgeries, and they receive no better, and by a lot of accounts worse, treatment.

The problem is differences in population. We are heterogenous, not homogenous, like several of those “higher performing” countries. We are overpopulated and the unhealthier portions of our population are growing while the healthier are contracting. We are fatter and sicker than the countries ahead of us, and in several sub-cultures in the US preventative medicine is a completely foreign idea.

Could our system use a complete overhaul? Absofrickinglutely. Is it fricked because of capitalism? No. It is fricked because it is decades of patch work legislation with endless nuance from a patient, insurer, and provider perspective. It is the most convoluted institution in our country. The defense department is 1st grade math in comparison. That isn't just because of capitalism. It was designed in unsustainable fashion from the get-go and never fixed. It wasn't built to handle 300 million fat people that don't care about their own well-being.

I talk to doctors that have no idea how the government system works. I talk to FTC employees that have no idea how the hospital system works. I talk to insurance companies that have no idea how either work. It needs to start over.

Kinda figured Christus would have bought them out considering their Shreveport and East Texas presence

Denial.
Not a river in Egypt.

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You are the idiot if you think P.E. Should be prohibited from owning what you or I can own. How a hospital is run is what should be regulated, not who can own it.

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Then fine. If it was properly regulated, it would not be at all attractive to PE.

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I’m telling you, all of these MAGA populists are going to wind up cheek to jowl with the commies.

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Do you think I'm a MAGA populist?

How is the profitability relationship between the private patient and the hospital regulated?