Holy Payday, Batman

A CEO bags $250 million driving his hospital chain into bankruptcy

“America’s health care system is neither healthy, caring, nor a system.” – Walter Cronkite

They used to stick leeches on patients. Now they put them in charge of entire health care systems.

The CEO of Dallas-based Steward Health System drove his hospital chain into bankruptcy, while he and entities he owned collected at least $250 million in payments, according to a rough accounting by The Wall Street Journal. It may have been more.

Dr. Ralph de la Torre, a gifted cardiac surgeon turned private equity hatchet man, bled his 31-hospital chain dry to finance his lifestyle, his critics say.

This included a $40 million yacht, a $15 million sport fishing boat, a $7.2 million Dallas mansion, a $7.2 million, a 500-acre Texas ranch, and a couple of private jets valued at $95 million owned by an entity that de la Torre controls.

Meantime, Steward’s hospital staff were left scrambling to pay bills. Vendors and lenders went without pay, supplies ran short, and patients died from inadequately equipped facilities, according to lawsuits filed against Steward.

This has been going on for a long time thanks to de la Torre and Cerberus Capital Management, the private equity firm he courted for a series of complicated, blood-sucking deals. But sometimes, when all the parasites are fully gorged and their hosts are dying, government officials finally take notice.

(Illustration: AI generated.)

Bats, bedbugs and the repo man

Dreadful tales abound at Steward – shameful incidents that just shouldn’t happen in a developed nation’s health care industry. For instance:

• In Rockledge, Fla. , a Steward hospital was infested with thousands of bats and peppered with guano. A patient reportedly complained he was being attacked by a “giant grasshopper.” He wasn’t bat-shit crazy. It was actually a bat.