Rein In Private Equity in Healthcare and Protect Patients

I am your constituent and I want you to know Prospect Health has just declared bankruptcy. They were run by a private equity firm, Leonard Green and Partners. They were called out in the bi partisan Senate Budget Committee report a few days ago for bleeding Prospect dry and funneling the money to investors. Here is a link to that report that details how this behavior harms patients. https://www.budget.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/profits_over_patients_the_harmful_effects_of_private_equity_on_the_ushealthcaresystem1.pdf. It is a complicated situation but when private equity acquires a healthcare facility, they restructure it into a vertically integrated chain of businesses all required to funnel profits to the top. Less profitable medical functions, like ob/gyn, are often discarded harming rural communities. The private equity firm sold out the land under the hospitals to another of its companies and forced the hospitals to now pay rent, which translated into above market dividends for investors and bankruptcy for the hospitals. There was a bill in the last Congress to address the harm PE is causing and I want you to urge its reintroduction and get it passed so your constituents have some protection when they need it most. The bill was S.5333/H.R.9985 the Stop Wall Street Looting Act. Here is what it would have done: Require investment funds to have ‘skin in the game’: Forcing private equity firms and their partners to be on the hook for the liabilities of companies under their control, including debt, legal judgments and pension-related obligations. End ‘looting’ of portfolio companies: Limiting how much private equity firms can extract from companies and closing the loophole that PE firms have used to hide assets from bankruptcy courts. Protect workers, customers and communities: Preventing PE firms from walking away when a company fails and shielding employees from the consequences. This would include prioritizing workers’ pay in the bankruptcy process. Empower investors by increasing transparency: Requiring PE firms to disclose any fees, returns and other information about their funds and the corporate loans they make so that investors can monitor their money decisions. Put guardrails around accessing public funds: Forcing firms receiving any money from federal or state agencies to publicly disclose how these dollars are being used. Drive REITs out of healthcare: Prohibiting payments from federal health programs to entities that sell assets or use them for loan collateral made to a real estate investment trust. Please help all of us and protect us from Private Equity’s degradation of the healthcare system in our country. Thank you. https://dl-rapidbot.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/attachments/1/6d4c/1c20/6d4c1c20-5be6-4133-857f-61672bd5eb2d.php