Authored by Lawrence Wilson and Sylvia Xu via The Epoch Times,
There's a greater than one in 10 chance your hospital is owned by someone who's trying to double their money in seven years.
If you live in Kentucky, your chances are one in six. In New Mexico, more than one in three.
Walk into an emergency room, and there's a 40 percent chance the doctor who stitches you up works for a staffing company owned by private investors, not the hospital.
At a time when less than half of Americans report being consistently able to afford healthcare, private investors are looking to hospitals and physician practices as a source of profit.
Private equity firms, which invest money on behalf of pension funds, universities, sovereign wealth funds, and wealthy individuals, buy healthcare providers expecting them to produce a better return than the stock market.
That may be no surprise to the 82 million Americans who make tradeoffs such as choosing between buying food and going to the doctor, nor to the nearly half of Americans with healthcare debt who have drained their savings to pay medical bills.
Providers are attractive targets for private investors for the same reasons any business might be, according to analysts.
Hospitals and physician practices are virtually recession-proof. They're fueled by a steady supply of aging customers. Historically, there have been lots of small, independent o
