How Private Equity Is Ruining American Health Care
Investors have been buying up doctor’s offices, cutting costs, and, critics say, putting pressure on physicians in ways that hurt patients. The pandemic could make things even worse.
Not long after Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, ordered the state’s 40 million residents to stay home to stop the spread of the new coronavirus, Dr. Greg Morganroth called his team of doctors and said their dermatology group was staying open.
Morganroth is chief executive officer of the California Skin Institute, which he founded in 2007 as a single office in Mountain View. He’s since expanded to more than 40 locations using a financing strategy that’s become exceedingly common in American health care: private equity. In this case, he took out a loan from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. that could eventually convert to an equity stake. CSI is now the largest dermatology chain in California.