Fund the fight demanding reform, challenging Wall Street's octopus-like network, and reining in the private equity industry now!

Private equity’s business model is fundamentally incompatible with health care’s essential purpose. The consequences are quite literally deadly when the public is left with a degraded healthcare system and the increasing possibility of vast areas where healthcare is simply unavailable.

Take Steward Health Care -- the hospital system in Massachusetts that private equity giant Cerberus looted ($800 million!) and then sold off in dire financial shape for the taxpayers and state regulators to pick up the pieces. Cerberus sold off Steward real estate, forced the hospitals to pay $400 million a year in rent for properties they once owned, and paid out dividends while closing hospitals.

Steward Health Care is just one case of a disturbing trend nationwide. Prospect Medical, which operates 16 hospitals in four states, was bought and looted for $658 million through fees charged by private equity firm Leonard Green. In 2019, Philadelphia’s historic Hahnemann Hospital, which primarily served low-income patients, shut down about a year after Apollo Global Management and Harrison Street Real Estate Capital got involved.

In recent months, we’re seeing encouraging forward movement. At long last, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have published their final rule on staffing standards in long-term care facilities … and it’s a good one.

The new rule sets minimum standards for having enough RNs and nurse aides, as well as higher levels of staffing based on the acuity of resident needs. The rule will also help highlight the unfairly low wages in this critical industry.

Your activism played a key role in pushing this significant reform over the finish line! Last year we submitted more than 10,000 of your official public comments in support of this proposed rule … and AFR also joined with 21 other allied organizations on a letter urging CMS to pass the strongest possible rule on staffing standards.

We win or we lose and so often it comes down to whether we have the resources needed to fund the campaigns that win.

Contribute to Americans for Financial Reform and fund the fight demanding reform, challenging Wall Street's octopus-like network, and reining in the private equity industry now!