Here’s what happens when a for-profit company takes over your local ER

Some quotes:

Private equity-backed CMGs now operate a quarter of all ERs in the US. The rise of the CMG reflects growing private equity investment in healthcare generally, up more than 20-fold since 2000.

Private equity investors often expect a several hundred per cent return on their investment, Wagner explained in his letter. “Where do you think those earnings come from, tip jars?” he wrote. “Nope. They’re extracted from overextended doctors, underpaid nurses, and from our community … Sound Physicians is here for profit, nothing more or less.”

[...] a recent paper found high physician turnover after private equity takeovers, with that turnover offset by physician assistants and nurse practitioners, who are less expensive but have less training. This could affect quality of care, as some studies have found that these changes may increase patient costs, with worse health outcomes.

Some signs suggest that the tide is turning on private equity’s involvement in healthcare. This year, several large CMGs declared bankruptcy. Economists suspect it’s due to a new federal law, the No Surprises Act, which outlaws predatory billing. According to Eileen Appelbaum, a healthcare economist, their “secret sauce was to pile medical debt on people with emergencies”.

Of course, if all these ERs have been taken over by private equity firms, and then they go bankrupt... who will step in and now serve the communities that have no ERs at all?

I both long for socialized medical care in the US, and am simultaneously fearful of it given our swinging pendulum of a government. Such sweeping and radical changes need to be made across the board to fix this problem, which would not have been a problem if we had taken mitigating steps decades earlier. And in the meantime, people of lower economic status and in underserved communities are once again the ones to suffer.

4 comments

Some quotes:
Private equity-backed CMGs now operate a quarter of all ERs in the US. The rise of the CMG reflects growing private equity investment in healthcare generally, up more than 20-fold since 2000.
Private equity investors often expect a several hundred per cent return on their investment, Wagner explained in his letter. “Where do you think those earnings come from, tip jars?” he wrote. “Nope. They’re extracted from overextended doctors, underpaid nurses, and from our community … Sound Physicians is here for profit, nothing more or less.”
[...] a recent paper found high physician turnover after private equity takeovers, with that turnover offset by physician assistants and nurse practitioners, who are less expensive but have less training. This could affect quality of care, as some studies have found that these changes may increase patient costs, with worse health outcomes.
Some signs suggest that the tide is turning on private equity’s involvement in healthcare. This year, several large CMGs declared bankruptcy. Economists suspect it’s due to a new federal law, the No Surprises Act, which outlaws predatory billing. According to Eileen Appelbaum, a healthcare economist, their “secret sauce was to pile medical debt on people with emergencies”.
Of course, if all these ERs have been taken over by private equity firms, and then they go bankrupt... who will step in and now serve the communities that have no ERs at all?
I both long for socialized medical care in the US, and am simultaneously fearful of it given our swinging pendulum of a government. Such sweeping and radical changes need to be made across the board to fix this problem, which would not have been a problem if we had taken mitigating steps decades earlier. And in the meantime, people of lower economic status and in underserved communities are once again the ones to suffer.
- Why would you fear Medicare? Real Medicare is the best health insurance in the US.
  
  And it's constantly under the gun by conservatives. I'm not fearful of medicare itself, but the fact that we might one day get socialized healthcare only for it to be absolutely gutted by a reactionary government. That's kind of what I meant by "sweeping and radical changes" - if we have the government run healthcare, we need proper oversight to protect something that important.