While Louisiana patients suffered, this health care CEO bought a yacht

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Buried deep in the thousands of pages of one court case, a single line of a few simple words lays bare what can happen when bad actors apparently run amok in the American health system.

"These insiders," the line reads, "pilfered Steward's assets for their own material gain, while leaving the Company and its hospitals perpetually undercapitalized and insolvent."

Steward, in this case, is Steward Health Care LLC, the Texas-based hospital operator that ran hospitals around the country before collapsing into bankruptcy last year and being forced to sell off assets. One of the company's hospitals was Glenwood Regional Medical Center in West Monroe, a major health care provider in Louisiana's largely rural northeastern corner.

The "insiders" in the line refers to the company's former CEO, Ralph de la Torre, and a handful of other former Steward executives and board members. Earlier this month, Steward filed suit against those former leaders in an attempt to recoup some of what they paid.

According to the filing, "through their greed and bad faith misconduct, (they) operated Steward with the aim of enriching themselves."

The most galling allegation is that de la Torre and others arranged for a $111 million dividend payout to executives and board members in January 2021, "at a time when the SHC System was already insolvent."

In other words, even as their hospitals were failing, the company's executives and board members were paying out tens of millions of dollars themselves. De la Torre, the suit alleges, got $81.5 million in the deal, money he turned around and used to purchase a $30 million yacht.

The suit also alleges de la Torre overpaid — by $200 million — for five hospitals in Miami because he wanted an "empire" there. It also accuses him of directing payments for Steward assets into a company owned by himself and two other executives, again gaining millions while his hospitals failed.

Even in dry legalese, the filing is infuriating.

While de la Torre was enjoying his very first-world yacht, patients in West Monroe were getting "third world medicine," according to what one doctor told a federal inspector.

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The problems got so bad that state inspectors twice put the hospital on a restricted status after it determined that patients' health and safety were in "immediate jeopardy" due to supply and staffing shortages.

The second time, in early 2024, meant the hospital was allowed to operate at only about one-third of its capacity.

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