I live deep in the countryside and just spent about a month trying to navigate private-equity-owned healthcare while caring for and advocating for an elderly neighbor.

Every hospital within reasonable driving distance, and almost every medical practice, is owned by the same small hospital chain that itself is owned by private equity.

Efficiency?

The first thing they did when they took over was close a small hospital that had been providing critical services to relatively isolated rural people for close to a century. I guess that's efficient ... for investors.

Then they reduced staffing levels in the practices they own. They stopped hiring specialists for locations where profit isn't possible. Need a gastroenterologist to explore whether subcritical anemia is being caused by a slow GI bleed? Sorry, we don't do that here anymore. We'll try to provide a referral for when you get out of the hospital, but you may have to drive a couple hours. Oh, too ill to drive? We're very sorry, but it's out of our hands.

That sort of thing. I guess it's efficient ... for investors.

We used to have pretty good health care around here, before private equity got involved and started directing profits to investors.