These Are The Plunderers -- Not Bedtime Reading

I made the mistake of reading this book before bed every night.  Of course, that's when I read every book.  It's just that this one made me mad every time I picked it up. 

What I mean to say is that I already knew it would be a good book.  I've read Gretchen Morgenson before.  She knows her stuff and is always a good read.  This is a good read also. It's just that it will make you mad.

Ms. Morgenson hooks you right off the bat with a gut-wrenching, personal story about how high finance can ruin an innocent life.  Now that I think about it, it's quite a trick.  It would be like me, showing you how the FAA's decision not to staff the air traffic control system 40 years ago (after the PATCO strike) led directly to some crash (or two).  That would be hard to do.

Anyway, it goes on from there for a tour through high finance and the entry of Private Equity's (I probably shouldn't capitalize that) entrance into the world of hospitals.  It will spin your head around.  For instance, one of the main Masters of the Universe highlighted in the book is Leon Black.  After leaving a 30-year swath of destruction and riches behind him, he decided to "retire".  Well, retire after it came out that he had paid Jeffrey Epstien $158 million in 5 years.  (I wonder how long Epstien will live in America's collective memory?)

So, read the book.  And here's a practical exercise for you, once you have.

Go to Google (or DuckDuckGo) and type in "Who owns my hospital?".  For me, that is, "Who owns Crestwood Hospital Huntsville, AL?".  Then spend the next 30 minutes trying to find out who owns it (if they don't want you to know).  I finally (yeah, you  might have to work for it) found mine here:

Owner of Crestwood Medical Center in Huntsville suffers data breach

"Community Health Systems, owner of 78 hospitals across the country, announced on its website their cyber security software discovered an unauthorized party had gained access to a transfer system the hospitals use, GoAnywhere."

So, Community Health Systems, huh?  Let's see what Wikipedia has to say about this outfit, shall we?

"Community Health Systems (CHS) is a Fortune 500 company based in Franklin, Tennessee."

"The company made its initial public offering in 1991. In 1996, the company was purchased by private equity firm Forstmann Little & Company.[11]"

"In 2000, Community Health Systems paid $31 million to the United States Department of Justice to settle a review of its billing practices."

"On August 4, 2014, Community Health Systems paid $95.14 million to the United States Department of Justice to resolve multiple lawsuits "alleging that the company knowingly billed government health care programs for inpatient services that should have been billed as outpatient or observation services".

"From March 2020 to May 2021 – during the COVID-19 pandemic – CHS filed more than 19,000 lawsuits against individuals for not being able to pay off their medical debt (some from hospitals it no longer owned) even as the company collected over $700 million in Covid relief funds from the federal government.[49]"

Now, I left out all the corporate gyrations about who bought who, what got spun off, who picked up whose liability and on and on and on.  But it sure sounds a lot like what Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner wrote about it their book.  You might want to give it a read -- before you search to see who owns your hospital.

Or, on the other hand, you might get lucky.  You might be doing business with a hospital like the other one in Huntsville, Alabama -- Huntsville Hospital System. (From Wikipedia)

"The Huntsville Hospital Health System, also known as Huntsville Hospital, is a public, not-for-profit hospital organization consisting of several sites and buildings originating in the downtown area of Huntsville, Alabama."

Their Wikipedia entry is amazingly straightforward compared to the other one.  Even their own "About Us" page on their own web site is amazingly transparent (comparatively).

"Huntsville Hospital was established in 1895 and is a community-based, not-for-profit hospital located in Madison County, Alabama. It has always been volunteer-led and community owned. The hospital is governed by the eleven-member Health Care Authority of the City of Huntsville."

Fascinating, no?  But I know what you're thinking.  "Private" is better.  "Public" is worse.  Right?  You'll only agree with that bit of marketing because you haven't read this book.  Read it.

Don Brown
September 3, 2023