Barbara Thornton, an Arlington resident, provided this opinion in support of a bill to control private equity’s effects on hospitals by Sen. Cindy Friedman, a Democrat representing Arlington, Billerica, Lexington, Burlington and Woburn.
Massachusetts has a new opportunity to protect its citizens from the scourge that private-equity firms wrought on the state through the Steward Health/Cerberus debacle of recent years. Our state senator, Cindy Friedman, has proposed a comprehensive piece of legislation aimed at helping to prevent such a disaster in the future.
By 2024, Steward Health had taken control of the following nine community-based hospitals in Massachusetts:
1. Carney Hospital (Dorchester)
2. Good Samaritan Medical Center (Brockton)
3. Holy Family Hospital – Haverhill (Haverhill)
4. Holy Family Hospital – Methuen (Methuen)
5. Morton Hospital (Taunton)
6. Nashoba Valley Medical Center (Ayer)
7. Norwood Hospital (Norwood)
8. St. Anne’s Hospital (Fall River)
9. St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center (Brighton)
But in true “private-equity” fashion, and under the nose of state officials who lacked the knowledge or will to stop this, Steward sucked out the value of the hospitals by leasing the land to other companies and instead of paying the bills to improve those hospitals or even pay funds due for life-saving hospital equipment, Steward leaders including Ralph de la Torre went on extensive buying trips — yachts, planes, show horses, etc., while Massachusetts residents in his hospitals died.
Now Friedman offers Massachusetts another chance to “get it right,” to step up to our responsibilities to provide safe and important health services to Mass. residents.
Last Jan. 8. Ch. 343 of the Acts of 2024 was signed into law. But it did not go far enough.
Friedman led the creation of as “Act enhancing health care market oversight and pharmaceutical access (2025).” This bill, No. 868, goes further by protecting Massachusetts health-care practices and providers from the corporate practice of medicine, by strengthening oversight of private equity in health care and by amending the attorney general’s “False Claims Statute” to add interest held by a health-care REIT to the definition of “ownership or investment interest.”
Personally, I don’t know why every state legislator wouldn’t be in favor of these policies . . . unless the legislators were more sympathetic to private-equity companies than to Massachusetts citizens! We are lucky to have Friedman representing our interests. I encourage Arlington residents to support this legislation and for those who have friends and relatives outside of her district to ask them to support this important legislation as well.
May 6, 2025: Friedman aims to guard against Trump excess
These comments were published Thursday, May 15, 2025.
