Senate Co-Sponsorship Memoranda

NEW!

Subscribe to receive notifications of new Co-Sponsorship Memos circulated

By Member | By Date | Keyword Search

Senate of Pennsylvania
Session of 2021 - 2022 Regular Session

MEMORANDUM

Posted:	June 8, 2022 12:52 PM
From:	Senator John I. Kane and Sen. Amanda M. Cappelletti, Sen. Anthony H. Williams, Sen. Timothy P. Kearney
To:	All Senate members
Subject:	For-Profit Healthcare Reform: Prohibit For-Profit Hospitals

Health care in Delaware County is under siege from for-profit operators. Crozer Health, Delaware County’s major hospital system, is on the brink of collapse. Many of Delco’s 575,000 residents will lose access to healthcare. The private equity firm that purchased Crozer Health has a history of acquiring hospitals, siphoning funds from the hospitals to generate substantial revenue, and then selling the hospital and health system real estate assets to another for-profit entity owned by the private equity firm. This leaves the hospital and health systems with major financial burdens, debts, and large rent payments to the for-profit real estate owner. To deal with this financial burden, the for-profit company running the hospital and health systems is cutting down healthcare and hospital services and cut staff to generate a short-term profit and sizeable dividend.  The cuts to services and staff are so dramatic, that hospitals and health systems find themselves underfunded, understaffed, and overwhelmed, eventually resulting in closure. In other words, this is all according to their plan. This same situation played out several years ago when Hahnemann Hospital which opened in 1852 was bought and driven into the ground by a private equity firm. Before the hospital closed, the for-profit entity sold the real estate assets to a for-profit entity that it controlled. It is unacceptable to allow the closure of hospitals when private companies rake in hundreds of millions from the closure, while leaving hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians without critical healthcare services. The legislation we plan to introduce is in direct response to the for-profit financial abuse of hospital and health systems thanks to one-sided private equity deals.   The bill we are introducing would prohibit for-profit entities from owning or managing hospitals in Pennsylvania. As it stands, there is very little oversight of this unsustainable business practice and worse, the Crozer-Prospect and Hahnemann examples show us that it does not provide high quality, accessible healthcare to Pennsylvania residents. Please join us in co-sponsoring this bill to allow for better management and organizational practices for hospital systems, lower healthcare costs for Pennsylvanians, accessible healthcare for constituents, and prevent hospitals in the Commonwealth from further closure due to deceptive, for-profit private equity ownership of hospitals and health care systems.

---