Posted on 09/04/2024 4:50:23 PM PDT by Jim Noble
Embattled Steward Health Care chief Ralph de la Torre said Wednesday that he will not comply with a subpoena to testify at a Senate hearing next week on the collapse of his hospital system, setting up a showdown with lawmakers who are threatening to hold him in contempt.
De la Torre did not rule out appearing before Congress eventually, but said through an attorney it would be “wholly inappropriate” to testify before his company emerges from the complex bankruptcy proceedings that have followed for-profit Steward’s spectacular downfall. And that process took a substantial step forward Wednesday, as a federal judge overseeing the bankruptcy case approved the sale of six Massachusetts hospitals to new operators for a total of $343 million.
But key members on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions made clear they were not amenable to delaying the hearing scheduled for Sept. 12. Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts raised the specter of consequences for de la Torre
“De la Torre is as cowardly as he is cruel,” Markey said in a statement issued with fellow Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. “He owes the public and Congress answers for his appalling greed — and de la Torre must be held in contempt if he fails to appear before the Committee....”
(Excerpt) Read more at bostonglobe.com ...
But I posted it for a different reason. The Senate is full of low characters, and Edward "Ed" Markey is among them.
But a subpoena because "he owes the public...answers for his appalling greed" is not a legitimate legislative purpose. In our era, both parties in both Houses do this Star Chamber act, and I think it's a disgrace. This subpoena should be quashed on the grounds that, no, de la Torre does not "owe the public..answers", the only thing he "owes the public" is to show up at his inevitable trial and go to prison quietly if that's how the cards fall. Congress is not a Grand Jury (several real Grand Juries are working on this matter right now), it's not a Star Chamber, and the nation wo;uld be better if it stopped acting like one.
Carney Hospital, now bankrupted and closed, gave me my first job after fellowship, and its ruination makes me very sad, even though I haven't set foot there since 1987.
Could be on the advice of our Maoist bull dyke Governor.
“$40 million yacht”
Bernie Sanders
doesn’t add much:
https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/ralph-de-la-torre-senate-steward-health-care/
Congress has inherent subpoena power. No one has the right to refuse to comply. And the courts have absolutely no say in the matter.
He can take the 5th all day long if his attorney advises that. But show up he must.
L
all of the stewart facilities are horrible
under capitalized .
They are rundown and require massive renovation and equipment replacement.
Most will be closed .
Easier to build new or move beds .
Note: This matter is beyond my scope of understanding.
WIKI
Steward began in 2010 in Massachusetts, when private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management acquired the failing non-profit Caritas Christi Health Care system. This move was led by Caritas CEO Ralph de la Torre, MD, a former cardiac surgeon who became founder and CEO of the new system
In September 2016, Steward and Cerberus entered a $1.25 billion deal with real estate investment trust Medical Properties Trust, in which MPT would purchase all of Steward’s hospital properties for $1.2 billion and pay an additional $50 million for a 5 percent stake in the company. In return, Steward would lease the properties back from MPT. This influx of money would allow Steward to pay back the entirety of Cerberus’ initial 2010 investment while the firm would remain a majority owner, in addition to allowing the company to pay back all of its $400 million in debt. Steward and Cerberus were further able to provide hundreds of millions of dollars in dividends to investors from this sale, including to de la Torre, and fund a massive national expansion. The deal became final in September 2017, and would mark the acceleration of the company’s strategy of funding further expansions by selling purchased facilities’ real estate to MPT. This strategy has widely been labeled as a significant factor in the system’s later financial difficulties. Studies noted that while a large portion of the proceeds from the sales went toward expansion and investor dividends, the hospitals themselves received little from the sales and were left responsible for lease payments with built-in escalator clauses which saw rent payments increase annually. In correspondence with The Boston Globe in 2024, de la Torre and Cerberus both distanced themselves from responsibility for the deals with MPT, each pointing to the other as the driving force behind the deals.
The company’s [bankruptcy] filing revealed approximately $9 billion in liabilities, including $6.6 billion in long-term rent obligations, $1.2 billion in loans, almost $1 billion in unpaid bills to vendors, and $290 million in unpaid wages and benefits to its employees.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steward_Health_Care
I used to pay hospitals in my local area here. Total payables for Docs, Hospital and Patient reimbursements was about $8B a year. not small potatoes. every June as the hospitals were reaching fiscal year end they would beg us to forward our payment schedule. They spend money like it was water.
The Steward story is REALLY complicated, briefly:
Catholic hospitals in Massachusetts were mostly (but not all) run by dioceses. Some were run by religious orders.
In the 90s, when things started to get hard, the Archdiocese of Boston created Caritas Christi to own and operate the hospitals.
For complicated reasons related to the medical economics of Boston, the Caritas hospitals got increasing numbers of Medicaid and self-pay (i.e., no pay) patients and became effectively bankrupt.
Ralph de la Torre (hereafter RDT) was an up and coming and well regarded heart surgeon. Around 2010, he began to express interest in becoming CEO of one of the Harvard hospitals. This was out of range, but a businessman named Jack Connors suggested to the Archdiocese that they look at RDT to run Caritas Christi. He was offered the job and accepted.
Once it became clear the hospitals were going to fail, he created a for-profit company called Steward which bought the hospitals with cash from Cerberus Capital Partners (a VC firm), after making hefty campaign contributions to multiple people (that’s how things work in MA). The Governor was a Republican with a background in healthcare finance, everyone else involved was a Democrat.
Steward was solvent for a few years, but did not invest in physical plant, and money started to flow into the pockets of the “investors”, incluidng RDT. As facilities deteriorated, the balance sheets turned negative, and in 2016 Steward sold the land the hospitals sit on to Medical Properties Trust, with RDT’s first yuge dividend (>100 million) as a byproduct.
Of course, the rents Steward promised the new owners of the land were wildly unrealistic, and things went from bad to worse. Companies repossessed medical equipment for nonpayment, debts grew, and a woman in labor died because the blood pump needed for her emergency transfusion had been repossessed the month before.
During all this, RDT received huge annual salaries and dividends. It appears that Federal funds (Medicare/Medicaid) may have been diverted from patient care to various projects of interest to RDT.
Steward HQ moved to Dallas. RDT got divorced and married a 27 year old equestrian. He has two yachts, two jets, a mansion in Dallas, an “apartment” in Madrid, and he scored a contract with the Government of Malta to run their hospitals which collapsed after a short time but not until after RDT scored another hundred million or so. Malta has filed a complaint with Interpol which is investigating.
It’s not a coincidence that RDT was very generous to the Attorneys General of Massachusetts, including the current governor who, when she was AG, signed off of the sale/leaseback of the hospital land in 2016.
Several Grand Juries are now all over this, and I suspect it won’t end well for RDT.
Massholechusetts, that’s your problem rite there.
“Massholechusetts, that’s your problem rite there.”
The private equity economic model is also responsible for destroying this company and many others. Private equity “investors” buy a company, load it with debt, strip the assets, offshore operations and jobs where possible put millions in their own pockets, milk the company into bankruptcy, then jettison the carcass leaving destroyed lives, jobs, and communities behind.
Private equity vultures, in league with “too big to fail” Wall Street investment banks, contributed greatly to the destruction and offshoring of America’s manufacturing supply chains in the 1990’s and early 2000’s. Their partnership with greedy politicians of both parties has resulted in the corruption of government at all levels. When the history of the decline and fall of the American republic is written, the rapacious role of private equity will be a leading cause.
“Massholechusetts, that’s your problem rite there.”
The private equity economic model is also responsible for destroying this company and many others. Private equity “investors” buy a company, load it with debt, strip the assets, offshore operations and jobs where possible put millions in their own pockets, milk the company into bankruptcy, then jettison the carcass leaving destroyed lives, jobs, and communities behind.
Private equity vultures, in league with “too big to fail” Wall Street investment banks, contributed greatly to the destruction and offshoring of America’s manufacturing supply chains in the 1990’s and early 2000’s. Their partnership with greedy politicians of both parties has resulted in the corruption of government at all levels. When the history of the decline and fall of the American republic is written, the rapacious role of private equity will be a leading cause.
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