Pennsylvania Fights Hospital Closures With Curb on For-Profit Buyers
Hospitals owned by private equity firms were shuttered, leaving health care deserts in some poor communities. Now lawmakers want to ban for-profit companies from doing it again.
Private equity-owned Springfield Hospital closed early last year in a move it called temporary.
Photographer: Lauren Coleman-Lochner
Pennsylvania lawmakers plan to introduce legislation that would place a moratorium on private equity and other for-profit firms from buying hospitals in the state, following closures and cutbacks that curtailed care in parts of suburban Philadelphia.
The package of bills would also prohibit owners from taking out dividends within two years of an acquisition and limit a type of financing known as sale-leaseback transactions on hospitals’ real estate. The legislation was floated at the end of the session last year but didn’t progress. A separate bill introduced this year, meanwhile, would make it more difficult to close hospitals.