Private Equity firms should be banned, or at least much more highly regulated. They're parasites that suck the life out of everything they buy to get the most money they can for selling it off in pieces. Any company they buy is almost guaranteed to atrophy into non-existence under their ownership. They're disgusting leeches that contribute absolutely nothing to society.

Privately owned hospitals are an excellent example of why essential public services shouldn't be privatised.

Imagine privatising the health service into a for-profit system that answers to its owners, shareholders, and/or "market desires"?! That's an obvious recipe for disaster.

Same with privatising prisons, or schools, or roads, or the fire brigade, or water suppliers.

I have a little litmus test for whether something should be in public ownership paid for by taxes because having it be effective and in line with the needs of the nation are worth the cost (e.g. if we stopped maintaining our roads we'd save money up until the roads crumbled and the nation fell apart);

Would it be a disaster on a national scale impacting the whole country if this service went away? If so, it should be Nationalised.

Water service shut down? Everybody dies.

Road management shut down? Roads crumble, vehicles can no longer get around, and the backbone of everything collapses. Country collapses.

Internet connectivity shut down? Huge economic and social collapse across the nation, Country may collapse.

Schools shut down? Education suffers immensely, country is deeply hurt by a sort of self inflicted brain drain on a scale never before seen. Country suffers greatly.

Power grid shut down? Chaos, death, country collapses.

Telephone/mobile phone grid shut down? Communication severely hampered, people die, economic disaster...

Etc etc ...

If a service is essential, truly essential to the health of the nation (as opposed to a "nice to have but not a disaster if it goes away" service), it should be Nationalised so that it is maintained properly and at a reasonable cost, rather than price gouged while cutting features and functionality to further profits.

There's no point arguing that private equity firms (a particularly evil lot btw) shouldn't own hospitals. That's thinking way, way, WAY too small.

Hospitals shouldn't be privately owned AT ALL.

They also perform extremely predatory billing. They will send the bill, clock 30 days, then send a collection letter. You can be in small claims court 60-90 days after a doctor's visit, all so they can collect legal fees.

No shit.

SHOCKING

Why the fuck are we still arguing about this? Privatized necessities do not work. This has been proven for almost 200 years with our current systemic dichotomy.

I hate living in North America. This conversation should have been over forever ago but it’s still raging.

No way we could have seen that coming...

This is one of those important pieces of data that bears remembering in many different contexts: the rich will happily kill you for a buck. That's a big part of why they're rich.

Counter intuitive, dead people don't pay bills. You'd think they would ensure alive people who could be saddled with medical debt forever, thus an income stream. If i were a greedy business, I'd do it like that.

this is political violence.

seen it when it was first being posted like 2 years ago on a sub, when user was frustrated by the lack of private physicians in her area for her child, one user said it was due to private equity and teledoc companies.

CMS didn't pick up on this? What are the damn inspections for if they don't suss out shit like this.

Maybe if hospitals would stop being sponsored by Jesus and healing by faith bullshit, they might be able to actually save people.

"WELCOME TO OUR MOTHER OF THE HOLY LORD JESUS CHRIST BAPTIST HOSPITAL, how would you like us to pray away your gaping wound today?"

It feels like if you just build an elaborate enough Rube Goldberg machine for killing someone it suddenly isn't considered murder anymore.

I mean yeah, they made the ER room more efficient as far as capital accumulation is considered! You come in, die, and now there's room and personnel available to take the next persons money! No more silly time and resource consuming "people being saved" nonsense here! We improved efficiency for the shareholders!

Saw this one rolling out in slow-motion some 20 years ago when HCA bought out Columbia Hospital systems.

F'kin awful. We so need a single payer to leverage equity out of the picture. (actually private equity needs to die because the billionaires are taxed again, like they used to be in the 1950's - when America was (for some things) great.

No shit.

aaaaaaaaaaaand radicalized

A study performed by one of the most esteemed schools in the world shows that people are dying needlessly due to this practice... and this is going to be the last we hear about it. There's no one who has the power to fix this willing to try.

too bad health outcomes arent the KPI these people are measuring.... profit is the only KPI that matters

Nice to have it actually looked into but beyond that; no shit, what did you expect would happen?

Because those firms care about cutting costs and making money, not saving lives.

Healthcare should not be for profit.

PE access to healthcare and vets should be illegal.

That's abooringdystopia material.

Color me shocked.

In other news, water is wet.

https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/private-equity-your-ears-will-bleed

I'd guess that PE's aren't motivated by people's health, unlike health professionals. So where are the laws to keep them from being nabbed by rent-seekers

well that seems like an obvious outcome

What, capitalism and healthcare are... a bad match???? .... WHAT!?

Medicare beneficiaries in the emergency departments of private equity hospitals experienced seven additional deaths per 10,000 visits after acquisition relative to hospitals that were not acquired by private equity, the team found. This rise represented a 13 percent increase from a baseline of 52 deaths per 10,000 visits.

13% more death seems pretty significant