Plunder, sell, repeat: how wealthy investors keep bankrupting needy hospitals

Anson Chan for BI

When Steward Health Care — once America's largest private for-profit hospital system — declared bankruptcy last year, it seemed to mark the end of a long and catastrophic decline. Over the previous decade, eight of Steward's hospitals had been shuttered, some of them in communities with few other medical providers. The loss of critical care was devastating. "It's a public health hazard," a patient advocate told reporters when Steward closed its medical center in Phoenix.