Did you know that when you go to see a doctor in the United States at the hospital, their medical practice is likely
owned by a multi-billion-dollar, profit-seeking investment firm? It's one of the major reasons why
healthcare costs have been skyrocketing: to put more money into corporate investors' already stacked wallets.Most doctors go into medicine out of a genuine desire to help people, not to squeeze them into bankruptcy. But doctors aren't usually the ones deciding how much their services cost. Typically, doctors are employed through organizations called
doctors' practice groups, rather than through the hospitals at which they practice.
But private equity firms looked at doctors' groups and saw a business opportunity: buy up these networks of providers, and leach off of them like profit parasites.Why is healthcare in the U.S. -- which should be a human right -- allowed to be for-profit? Sign the petition to demand an end to this now. Congress must ensure that healthcare in the U.S. is about helping patients, not making billions of dollars!Once a corporation buys up a doctors' group, it gets to call a lot of the shots --
including how much to charge patients. When you get a bill from your doctor, she / he / they probably don't even know how much you're being charged, because they're not the ones making many of the billing decisions.
That's up to the discretion of their investors.The nonprofit organization ProPublica has released multiple reports about the insidious nature and ulterior motives of such takeovers. One of the largest medical staffing companies, called TeamHealth, is owned by the notorious Blackstone, a huge private equity firm that's all in for the cash. Tax documents show that TeamHealth -- under Blackstone -- has been tripling the expenses of healthcare, charging far more than what the treatments actually cost.
But it's doing all this behind the doctors' backs -- and without regard for how this harms patients.One doctor
reported to ProPublica:
"As an emergency medicine physician, I have absolutely no idea to whom or how much is billed in my name. I have no idea what is collected in my name. This is not what I signed up for and this isn't what most other ER docs signed up for. I went into medicine to lessen suffering, but ... I realize that I'm unintentionally worsening some patients' suffering."Health-care should be Help-care. Not scalp-patients-and-bankrupt-them-care.
There's no room for callous profit-seeking in an industry that's all about keeping people alive, well, and healthy.Sign the petition to demand that all doctors' groups, insurance companies, and hospitals are required to be not-for-profit! Private equity can find some other industry to leech off of.
