Private Equity is buying your doctor’s practice; What could possibly go wrong?

Something is wrong with American capitalism.  The ethos of making money and yield at all costs and gathering huge sums of money to buy and control parts of the economy we all need.   One area all of us will need sooner or later is healthcare.

Hospital systems have grown larger due to the predatory practices of large insurance carriers who used tiering that favored the large systems.

The savings for the consumer turned into double-digit increases in healthcare costs while the quality of care has plummeted.

Wall Street covents dollars over people but is now using its marketing clout to increase the cost of care everywhere, while your local doctor is finding it harder to compete and are starved for revenue.  The result is that many of them are now joining larger practices or working for large hospitals or private groups.

Their one size fits all models don’t fit everyone, as endure yearly increases imposed by insurance carriers when the large practices and hospitals have the ability to command higher reimbursements or else.

Our regulators have been asleep at the wheel for years and now it is costing us dearly.   Walk-in clinics are all over, while many doctors sell their practices and join the 15-minute visit revolution.  Does your doctor even know your name?  Do care more about the note they are writing than your health problem that was the reason for the visit?

Recently, the NY Times reported on the phenomenon.  Check it out below

Who Employs Your Doctor? Increasingly, a Private Equity Firm.

A new study finds that private equity firms own more than half of all specialists in certain U.S. markets.

In recent years, private equity firms have been gobbling up physician practices to form powerful medical groups across the country, according to a new report released Monday.

In more than a quarter of local markets — in places like Tucson, Ariz.; Columbus, Ohio; and Providence, R.I. — a single private equity firm owned more than 30 percent of practices in a given specialty in 2021. In 13 percent of the markets, the firms owned groups employing more than half the local specialists.

The medical groups were associated with higher prices in their respective markets, particularly when they controlled a dominant share, according to a paper by researchers at the Petris Center at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, a progressive think tank in Washington, D.C. When a firm controlled more than 30 percent of the market, the cost of care in three specialties — gastroenterology, dermatology, and obstetrics and gynecology — increased by double digits.

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