Private Equity vs. Public Health with Eileen O’Grady

America Dissected

Incision Media LLC

Politics, News, Society & Culture

4.6 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 7 March 2023

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Across the country, healthcare chains have been buying hospitals up like properties on a Monopoly board — changing their names and shuttering hospitals in rural communities. What’s driving this? The corporate influence on healthcare. Private equity firms with no expertise in healthcare have gotten into the game of consolidation, too, buying up clinics, healthcare companies, and community hospitals and stripping them for their parts. Abdul talks about the consequences and interviews Eileen O’Grady, a researcher and organizer who’s been on the front lines of exposing it.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Last week, the U.S. Department of Energy concluded with, quote, low confidence that the COVID-19
0:13.4	pandemic was caused by a leak from a lab in Wuhan, China.
0:16.6	A radically conservative district court judge in Texas has set to rule on a case that could
0:20.3	block access to medication abortions nationwide.
0:23.4	A brand new study shows that nearly half of the state and local public health workforce
0:27.0	left their organizations between 2017 and 2021.
0:30.9	And pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly slashes the price of insulin by 70%.
0:35.0	This is American Ascited.
0:36.0	I'm your host, Dr. Abdul Al Sayyad.
0:42.8	Today we're talking about the corrosive role that private equity plays in healthcare.
0:46.6	Now, if you're not familiar, private equity is the financial practice of using other people's
0:50.6	money to invest in, restructure, and often gut small companies all in the name of short-term
0:55.6	profit.
0:56.6	The unregulated world of private equity has played the villain in many American stories.
1:01.0	They were behind the shuddering of Toys R Us, Radio Shack in Deadspin.
1:04.1	They're the reason Taylor Swift had to re-record her masters.
1:07.2	But now, private equity has turned its attention to something far more insidious than retail,
1:11.7	blogs, or love songs, even if it's Taylor we're talking about here.
1:16.0	Across the country, private equity firms are buying up clinics, hospitals, and other healthcare
1:20.2	companies.
1:21.2	To appreciate their impact, I want you to think about the hospital you were born in.
1:24.7	Given a back of the envelope analysis of our listeners, you were probably born in the
	...

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