Across America, private equity is buying the hospitals that we the people pay for, looting them for hundreds of millions, and leaving whole cities without an emergency room.
This is not a theory. It is documented in a bipartisan U.S. Senate report and a state attorney general's lawsuit. And so far, nobody is going to prison.
Here is one case, start to finish.
The firm is Leonard Green & Partners. The hospital was Crozer Health, outside Philadelphia.
In 2016 they signed a binding promise to keep every hospital open for ten years. They told the community: "We're an expansion company, not a contraction company."
Then they got to work:
— Sold the hospitals' land and charged them ~$36M a year to rent back buildings they used to own
— Cashed out $88M of their own stock and forced the hospitals to borrow $325M to pay for it
— Walked off with $424M of the $645M pulled out of the company, according to the U.S. Senate
Eight hospitals closed. The Attorney General called it "corporate looting." In 2025, Crozer-Chester shut for good. 585,000 people. One less ER. A 160-year-old hospital, dead.
We paid for those hospitals. Medicare and Medicaid come out of our checks. They bought them with our money, bled them, and left the rest of us holding the wreckage and the bills.
Sam Lee, Prospect's chairman, renovated his Aspen home while the ERs went dark.
Pennsylvania lawmakers are demanding criminal charges. So far: none.
They dispute all of it. Good. The documents are public. Read them and decide for yourself.
This is the model, not the exception — private equity owns roughly 460 hospitals in this country. Yours could be next.