Private Equity's Latest Target: Your Emergency Room

Private equity is swallowing up America's emergency rooms. 1 in 4 ERs are now staffed by private equity-based firms. The waits are longer, the bills are higher, and ER doctors are being replaced by lower-paid contractors.
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[Pilarskiapril]

When a company calls patients "customers" that's a giant red flag right there..

[karolinawiatrowska]

Corporate greed needs to be checked. They are coming for homeownership, healthcare, our very basic existence

[ltamarawilson]

Sad part is people see the huge bill and think the DOCTOR is making too much, when in actuality the private equity billionaire on their yacht is real the reason why your $8, 000 bill was sent to collections.

[RB-yjng]

Greed is strangling every industry with no end in sight.

[incognito]

One nurse put it this way...."Corporations disguised as Hospitals"....

[ohiasdxfcghbljokasdjhnfvawehr]

remember when you were a kid and you thought hospitals, ERs and ambulances were public services, not privately run corporations? good times...

[seanwalsh]

Private Equity also is taking over elderly homes, and elderly people are dying earlier as a result.

[catpax]

Tired of being literally robbed by rich companies for trying to get my basic healthcare needs.

[mangodoc]

I’m a 60 year old ER doctor and I can’t wait until I can retire. Corporate medicine has stripped 90% of the joy from medicine. I never minded the long hours and unrealistic patient expectations, threats of lawsuits, drunks and body fluids and stress and panic and all the other tough issues that are inherent in emergency medicine, I mind the administration short-staffing the ER and whole hospital for the sake of corporate profit. Tide and Fords and hand lotion are fine in the free market, health care is not.

[paulewog]

We are living inside a corporation and it’s getting ugly. My health care should not be decided by a corporation pandering to their shareholders. We need to shift the paradigm……. Let us use this platform to change ideas on how we can get our sovereignty back

[polldock]

It’s not just the ER. If you’ve been a patient in a hospital in the last 20 years you know that care is horrendous.

[deathtouchltd]

I lost my mom to corporate healthcare greed. She had a heart attack, they stabilized her and kicked her to the curb. She died the next morning from a very violent and horrific heart attack. It was not the way anyone’s mom should go.

I will forever be an advocate for Medicare for all.

[davidd]

The ER, the floor, the icu, the OR, pcu, picu, nursing homes, home health, hospice.... not to mention the MD clinics.
If you put the bean counters in charge then counting beans becomes the goal.

[Oldgreycowboy]

The hospital I went to was sold. Including the Cardio Group. I went in 3 times for chest pains and hard time breathing. On a Monday I went in for a full workup that lasted a minute. Tuesday I was told the numbers looked good and go home and stay hydrated. I was lucky a visiting Dr was walking by and heard me say I was NOT ok. He came in listened to my heart and asked me to come back in at 5:30am 13hrs later. Wednesday, he did an angiogram. Within minutes he asked me when the last time I got this checked. Told him I was fighting them for 2 years. He did a quadruple bypass Thursday. I was lucky he was from 100 miles away and not with this hospital.

[jeffk]

“…for people who are in trouble, or scared or dying…to come into that space and say ‘How can we make money here?’, that seems unholy”.
It IS unholy. That comment was PERFECT to sum up the entire situation.

[eksbocks]

I got slapped with a $3000 bill for an emergency room visit.

My previous jobs refused to provide insurance. And I was denied Medicaid. Now the bill went to collections.

And the icing on the cake is: People keep nagging about job shortages in Minimum Wage fields. (While keeping you out of better jobs).

I never thought modern America would be this crazy and heartless.

[krickenthekraken]

As a veterinarian, I can tell you this is happening to our industry as well.

[Kirakirasama]

I am a Nurse Practitioner Student almost done with my education-- I worked in hospitals from housekeeping to registered nurse and over the 7 years I worked at the same hospital I watched the changes take place as the hospital was acquired. For the next 7 years I worked in psych and homecare and realized that no matter how desperate the needs of the population, there is someone trying to make a profit off of that suffering and need. We need to stop it, medical care is a human right, not a privilege and no other developed nation allows this behavior. Let's fight this at every opportunity we can!

[casstay]

Everything that is wrong with America…

[BearKat]

My dad was a doctor, he worked in emergency. He wanted more than anything that I would become a doctor. After he saw the direction of the medical field in general, he was happy i didn’t become a doctor.