Private Equity Promised to Revolutionize Health Care. Is It Making Things Worse?

Health care is a $4.3 trillion business in the United States, accounting for 18 percent of the nation’s economy. It should come as no surprise then that the industry has become attractive to private investors, who promise cost savings, expanded use of technology, and streamlined operations.

But according to Yale University’s Howard Forman, M.D., “most private equity money does seem to be making matters worse rather than better.” One issue is that investors chase the healthiest and most profitable patients, undermining another kind of equity — health equity — in an already deeply unequal health care system.

In the latest episode of The Dose podcast, host Joel Bervell charts a wide-ranging discussion with Dr. Forman, a professor of radiology and biomedical imaging, public health, management, and economics, about private equity’s growing role in American health care. This is the second episode of our new series of conversations about health care affordability.