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Bankrupt Steward Health puts its hospitals up for sale, discloses $9 bln in debt (www.reuters.com)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

22 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Bankrupt Steward Health Care has put all of its 31 U.S. hospitals up for sale, hoping to finalize transactions by the end of the summer to address its $9 billion in total liabilities, its attorneys said at a Tuesday court hearing in Houston.

Steward, which filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday, hopes to keep all of its hospitals open over the long term, Steward attorney Ray Schrock told U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Chris Lopez, who is overseeing the Chapter 11 proceedings.

The privately-owned company closed a hospital in Massachusetts earlier this year, and officials in that state have criticized Steward's management and its former private equity owners for making short-sighted financial decisions that undermined patients' care. Massachusetts officials in particular criticized a series of transactions that sold off the company's real estate and saddled it with long-term rent costs at its hospitals.

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[–] [email protected] 61 points 6 months ago (3 children)

... officials in that state have criticized Steward's management and its former private equity owners for making short-sighted financial decisions that undermined patients' care. Massachusetts officials in particular criticized a series of transactions that sold off the company's real estate and saddled it with long-term rent costs at its hospitals.

There should be a law banning private equity firms from owning hospitals or LTC homes, because all those firms do is strip them of their assets and raze them to the ground.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Yeah. Business Insider had a good long read on that. I think it was posted before, but it's worth reading.

In addition to their financial struggles, all of the hospitals shared three things in common. They all served low-income communities that suffered from a lack of access to healthcare. They were all owned at various points by for-profit investors, including leading private-equity firms like Cerberus, Leonard Green, and Apollo. And in a move that stripped the hospitals of one of their prime assets, the owners had sold the land beneath the facilities to a little-known real-estate investor called Medical Properties Trust. MPT, which has purchased some $16 billion of hospital real estate over the past two decades, now bills itself as one of the world's largest owners of hospital beds.

For many of the hospitals, the deals proved disastrous. Once their real estate was sold to MPT, they were forced to pay rent on what had always been their own property. That added to the massive debt burdens already placed on the hospitals by their for-profit owners, deepening their financial woes. It also deprived Americans of desperately needed healthcare and put lives at risk — all while enriching some of the world's wealthiest investors.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I don't see how this isn't a fraud on the same level as Enron. There is no way that MPT was an arm's length third party when literally everyone of Steward's hospitals was entering into leaseback agreements with them. The system is fucking broken and it's goddamn shameful. They are doing this with vital services which will cause communities untold suffering and has already resulted in loss of human life if you read up on their mismanagement of the hospitals.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Shameful is putting it lightly…

Investors at Cerberus, meanwhile, aren't the only ones who scored a home run by inflicting financial pain on Steward. In 2021, MPT loaned the hospital chain's operating team, including de la Torre, $335 million to buy out Cerberus. Steward then turned around and paid its new owners, including de la Torre, a dividend of about $100 million. A few months later, de la Torre bought a $40 million yacht named the Amaral, which features a library, a gym, and a whirlpool on the top deck. Just after that, Steward filed with the government to delay paying back pandemic-era loans, citing "extreme financial hardship."

[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 months ago (1 children)

That's the dumbest fucking thing I've read all day.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Living up to your name I see.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

there should be a law banning private equity firms

FTFY

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

All private equity is doing is basically a corporational cannibalism.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Can you imagine a shareholder having more power than a dr in deciding your healthcare options?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

if gov gets in charge think of the death panels

[–] [email protected] 30 points 6 months ago

Hospitals should never be privately owned. Business and healthcare have diametrically opposed incentives.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Some Christian hospital system that doesn't support the full spectrum of reproductive rights will buy it. Healthcare shouldn't be dictated by profits. What will it take to get universal healthcare? We should all be rioting.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

That's fucked up that the church has this kind of money.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

Yep, a reminder to all: if you have healthcare options that aren't tied up with hospital systems that don't provide full spectrum care, choose those systems. Getting a new primary sucks, changing providers sucks, but our choices matter.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 6 months ago (3 children)

God I don't want this privatization in Canada.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Poivrière is hard at it. I don't think Canadians will accept it willingly though, conservatives will spin it as owning the libs like they usually do

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Too late. They already own LTC homes and some medical centres.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

~~Drug Fraud~~ Doug Ford is hard at work into making it reality in Ontario.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I want to see right-wing politicians justify this.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago

They'll literally think it's good and an example of the glory of private markets because good companies survive and bad ones don't. So this just opens the market to new innovative, cost savings, streamlined, technology driven solutions

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Something something immigrants abortions

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Could they at least be creative in their dumbassery. Blaming brown people for all your problems is so overplayed