Ethically Challenged: Private Equity Storms U.S. Health Care

by Laura Katz Olson

Revealing the dark truth about the impact of predatory private equity firms on American health care. Won Gold from the Axiom Book Award in the Category of Business Ethics, the Benjamin Franklin Awards by the Independent Book Publishers Association and the North American Book Award in the Catergory of Business Finance, Finalist of the American Book Fest Best Book Social Change and Current Events by the American Book Fest Private equity (PE) firms pervade all aspects of our modern lives. Unlike other corporations, which generally manufacture products or provide services, they leverage considerable debt and other people's money to buy and sell businesses with the sole aim of earning supersized profits in the shortest time possible. With a voracious appetite and trillions of dollars at its disposal, the private equity industry is now buying everything from your opioid treatment center to that helicopter that helps swoop you up from a car crash site. It may even control how and when you can get your kidney dialysis. In Ethically Challenged , Laura Katz Olson describes how PE firms are gobbling up physician and dental practices; home care and hospice agencies; substance abuse, eating disorder, and autism services; urgent care facilities; and emergency medical transportation. With a sharp eye on cost and quality of care, Olson investigates the PE industry's impact on these essential services. She explains how PE firms pile up massive debt on their investment targets and how they bleed these enterprises with assorted fees and dividends for themselves. Throughout, she argues that public pension funds, which provide the preponderance of equity for PE buyouts, tend to ignore the pesky fact that their money may be undermining the very health care system their workers and retirees rely on. Weaving together insights from interviews with business owners and experts, newspaper articles, purchased data sets, and industry publications, Olson offers a unique perspective and appreciation of the significance of PE investments in health care. The first book to comprehensively address private equity and health care, Ethically Challenged raises the curtain on an industry notorious for its secrecy, exposing the nefarious side of its maneuvers.

440 pages, Hardcover

Published March 8, 2022

About the author

Laura Katz Olson, AGF Distinguished Professor of Political Science, has published nine nonfiction books focusing on healthcare and aging. Her novel, Wrinkled Rebels, will be released by Vine Leaves Press on July 23, 2024.

The Politics of Medicaid received Lehigh University’s Williamson Book Award in Social Research (2012). Elder Care Journey: A View from the Front Lines, which relates her personal experiences as a caregiver for her mother, won a Gold Medal in the Ninth Annual Living Now Book Awards (September 2017). Ethically Challenged: Private Equity Storms U.S. Health Care (2022) won a gold medal in both The North American Book Awards and the Axiom Business Book Awards. The book was also a finalist in the American Book Fest Best Book Awards. In 2009, she won the Charles A. McCoy Lifetime Achievement Award and, in 2022, the Joseph A. Dowling Award for Excellence in Research and Teaching.

Reviews

[Sam Bartlow · Rating 5 out of 5]

very informative

I worked in the healthcare industry dealing with autism. What I saw was all laid out in this book, and it did a great job laying out what was going on. I recommend everyone have a copy of this book as a reference. It is unashamed to lay out who the bad actors are and that alone will help shape my healthcare decisions.