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In final hours, Carney Hospital a busy place
By adamg on Fri, 08/30/2024 - 2:48pm
The Dorchester Reporter visits the Dorchester Avenue institution in its final hours of being bled dry by investors.
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Comments
This was all simple
This was all simple negligence and greed right? No one was set-up as a patsy to unwittingly “off” these institutions, so that developers could have their way with the land parcels, right?
No, it's greed
If the property was worth more than the hospital, they would have just sold the land or developed themselves.
There was a lot more money to be made milking the hospitals until there was nothing left. At that point they declare bankruptcy and walk away.
Didn't they sell the land?
and then rent it back under some absurd rate?
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/07/13/business/steward-hospital-sales-r...
It's all about the dollars and was never about running a hospital and serving patients.
Some day, Ralph de la Torre is going to get some bad news from Saint Peter...
Of course it was always about
Of course it was always about the dollars and not about serving patients. This is why more and not fewer regulations are needed. Conservatives love to rail against government and regulations and then are surprised when corporations extract as much money as possible and flee, then ask what is the government going to do about it. We keep going through this cycle of the rich fleecing communities and then asking for bailouts or leaving government to fix their messes while they move on to their next prey.
Greed in every way
It's always been about greed in every possible way, not just some conspiracy to replace the hospitals with luxury housing.
What is the state doing to prevent this from ever happening again?
yes
its important to know these landlords are also complicit. The land should be taken.
That sounds reasonable, very
That sounds reasonable Boston Dog, very Occamy. Thanks.
Thats what these 'private equity' companies do
They are like a parasite.. they suck all the money or things with value (like land) out of a company until its on its last leg, leave it for dead and move onto a new host to start the cycle all over again.
Its all these outfits do.
I wish this shit was illegal so people's livelihoods weren't at stake but politicians can't get their heads out of their asses.
Economic Zombie Fungi
Private equity firms are the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis of the economy.
They invade their hosts, hollow them out, and turn them into shambling zombie corpses doing the work of their infecting agents.
The problem is it's hard to define them.
Although you know it when you see it, it's hard to get a definition of "private equity" that actually defines the parasite that needs to be stopped, and differentiates it from other forms of private investment that are actually beneficial, such as your cousin fronting some money for you to start your barbershop in return for a share of the profits.
What happened to Carney is nothing new... buying an interest in companies and saddling them with ruinously expensive contracts to buy stuff or borrow money from other companies that you also own, and then throwing away the drained corpse, was quite popular in the 1980s.
Easiest thing
Easiest thing to do is prevent 'investors' in having a vote on the board. Investors can certainly invest in companies, but they cannot have a say in the functions. Either you believe in a business and its current management to be a silent investor or you don't invest.
Thats the problem. These equity companies get voting power, then install executives who will vote their way. Once that happens, its over for the company.
The other thing is to prevent investors from being 'debtors' or at least keep them in line with the rest of the debtors when having bankruptcy proceedings. What happens these days is the equity firm lines up first to suck money out when it goes into bankruptcy because they feel since they are apart of the company they should get paid first.
This would stop alot of it. It also would help if we'd dump the notion that 'corporations are people too'.
And yeah I agree about the 1980s, inviting an investor can backfire on you. Just ask our state auditor, Deb Goldberg, who's family ran the Stop & Shop supermarket chain prior to the 1990s. They brought in KKR to infuse the company with money. It was a profitable chain but the Goldbergs want more money to expand the chain even more. KKR over a few years kept buying shares so they ended up in control. Within a year or two, they sold their controlling shares to Ahold. Literally ripped out from the Goldberg family's hands.
Goldberg was interviewed when she was running for auditor about this, and she started to cry when asked about Stop & Shop. I can't say I blame here, decades of family work all taken away by an "investment banker". Yeah maybe a bad business deal, but still.. awful. And look at Stop & Shop today, its awful.
This could have been stopped if 'entities' where not allowed to 'own' companies.
Um, what?
Are you proposing that the owners of a company shouldn't have any say in how it's run? I'm not following this line of reasoning at all?
there is a difference
entity vs person
My point is more of an 'entity' having managing control over a company vs it being a sole person. A sole investor (a person) is fine to have managing control but it needs to be a person not an entity.
I'm still not following the argument
I'm still not following your argument. Let's say that an auto dealership (an "entity") wants to expand its service offerings and buys a partial interest in another company that operates a small fleet of mobile detailing vans; the detailing company will use the investment to buy more vans and hire more staff. Is it your position that the auto dealership should be prevented from having a seat on the detailing company's board?
When trying to create rules that will have the desired effect, the devil is always in the details and unintended consequences are always an iissue.
Almost Everyone in 02124
"The Carney is a shithole. I avoid it".
Almost everyone in 02124 in front of a journalist when it was announced it's closing.
"Oh. its a shame. it will hurt our community not having access to healthcare"
I wonder why it fell from grace
It certainly couldn't have been the ownership and management that caused that.
Management and circumstances
It had many problems but when it "fell from grace" I don't know.
BMC
When Caritas Christi Hospitals was selling, considering the populus who goes to Carney, it should have been sold to Boston Medical Center to become a 'city' hospital.
It should have never been allowed to morph into Stewart Healthcare.
At least they didn't sell to Ecumena and meet their fate like St Eligius did.
(Still makes me laugh that Humana sued NBC in 1987 because of the name "Ecumena" to prevent St Elsewhere from using the name because they thought it sounded similar. Ecumena was a big for-profit corporation that took failing hospitals to try to "improve" them. Sounds familiar? Even sounds familiar when comparing it to Humana. I guess Humana didn't want to be seen in a bad light. Good to know things never change and life really does imitate art)
(Source)
What reason would BMC have
What reason would BMC have had to buy it?
Maintaining access to care
It would also be a means of expansion of capacity and/or another place for people to get BMC care in their neighborhood.
i went once
thought it was fine
Sad they are one of reasons I
Sad they are one of reasons I got sober
I had back surgery there in
I had back surgery there in the early 1980s. I had HMO-style insurance at the time - about $12 per week - and left the hospital not owing any money.
Carney Hospital - the Gateway to Heaven
About 30 years ago I went there for a diagnostic ultrasound. Eventually a cardiologist at MGH told me that the issue could only be confirmed with a CT scan. I'm sure it would have been "God's will" if I had flopped and been planted at Cedar Grove.