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renewiltordtoday at 12:46 AM3 repliesview on HN

Private equity goes where the money is. Nothing is magically non-exploitative just because it's done by a bunch of small businessmen instead of a private equity company. There's a reason why Private Equity bought so many dialysis clinics. There's a reason why they're doing this.

It's easy to scam the government out of money for this because a bunch of well-meaning "useful idiots" will say "pay whatever it takes; give them as much money as they need; it's for human lives!" and none of that is true. It's all about using different battalions to rent-seek on normal tax-paying Americans.

Tim Walz lost his hope for re-election over this but he's not the only one. In time we will discover a large array of healthcare scams and home-care and autism/child mental health are going to be near the top.


Replies

hermanzegermantoday at 12:57 AM

If your dialysis clinics have the worst outcomes in the industrialised world, it should make you go hmmm.

And usually it's not a problem, of "Throwing more money at it", but lack of regulations and enforcing them.

That said, Physician Owned Clinics have better outcomes, there is no reason why that shouldn't be the standard model of operating them. Usually they have more moral scruples about worsening care for profit.

Also there is naturally more competition, if there are multiple small operators instead of only Fresenius Nephrocare or DaVita

https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/death-rates-at-u-s-dialys...

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desmoulinstoday at 2:35 AM

Yes, as soon as I hit the "...children who are largely insured by Medicaid programs..." part of the article, I figured that this is happening because some PE firms ran the numbers and discovered they could use autistic kids to squeeze as much money from medicaid as possible.

Panzer04today at 3:34 AM

We have something like this going on in Australia right now.

The NDIS is our disability welfare scheme, and it's costs have exploded as oversight has failed to keep pace with exploitative actors. Few questions asked welfare for our vulnerable would be nice, but sadly it doesn't look sustainable in most places.