Private Equity on the Government Teat

Why is Medicare reimbursing for-profit hospices, many of them owned by private equity firms?

My latest New Republic piece is written in response to this excellent New Yorker piece by Ava Kofman of ProPublica about the commercialization of, of all things, hospice care. More than 70 percent of all hospices are now for-profit enterprises, many of them owned by private equity firms that buy them, combine them with other hospices, load them up with debt, wring dubious savings out of them, then flip them in three to five years. It’s horrifying. My piece considers the question: Why the hell doesn’t Medicare disallow for-profit hospice from receiving government payments? We’ve become so inured to every aspect of health care getting turned sooner or later into a profit center that nobody seems willing even to discuss the matter. Did I mention Rep. Matt Gaetz (R.-Fla.) is the son of a guy who co-founded the biggest for-profit hospice company in the United States? Read my piece here.