Government Broke Healthcare and Now Rushes to Protect us from the Consequences

Governor Shapiro’s recent posturing over hospital closures by Private Equity (PE) owners reveals a deeper irony he hopes voters won’t notice.

The system where PE firms shutdown hospitals was built by the very policies politicians like Shapiro have supported and defended for decades.

The Governor's solution? More government intervention. A “crutch,” generously offered by the same political class that shattered healthcare's leg in the first place, to paraphrase Harry Brown.

Let’s break it down:

1. Private Equity didn’t distort healthcare alone. It was enabled.

   Private Equity isn’t operating in a vacuum. It thrives on cheap, abundant credit—courtesy of the Federal Reserve's money-printing regime. The Fed expands credit by injecting artificial money into the system, which flows first to institutional borrowers. This allows private equity firms to borrow vast sums at low cost and use those dollars to buy up real assets, like hospitals, at scale.

   
   

   In other words, your loss of purchasing power becomes their leverage.

   
   

   Governor Shapiro decries the outcomes of consolidation—but ignores the root cause: the central banking system and monetary policy that makes such consolidations profitable in the first place.

   
   

2. Healthcare economics have already been destroyed—from the inside.

   
   

   For over 70 years, government interference has twisted the economics of medicine beyond recognition. Regulation, licensing cartels, and quasi-socialized reimbursement schemes have created a system so distorted it bears little resemblance to a true market. Bureaucratic bloat, perverse incentives, and crony regulatory capture are now features, not bugs, of healthcare delivery.

   
   

   To cope, hospitals and private practices have consolidated. Why? Because only scale allows them to survive the byzantine compliance and reimbursement landscape government created. These consolidations then become ripe targets for private equity roll-ups—another side effect of the artificial credit environment.

   
   

Shapiro isn’t fixing the root problem. He’s merely politically posturing by offering another crutch for the damage done by 70-years of government meddling by his fellow democrats -- with plenty of help from republicans.