I hope someone from Steward ends up paying for their sins

I've been consumed of late with trying to keep up with all the ups and downs of Steward Health Care System, which owns and ran (into the ground) a number of hospitals in Massachusetts. Steward is a classic example of why there are certain things - like healthcare - that would be better off not being privatized. Steward is a classic tale of corporate profligacy, executive perfidy, private equity greed. The result: bankruptcy, hospital closures, lost job, lost lives. 

So we've gotten to read about a woman who died after childbirth in a Steward hospital in Boston because the equipment that would have saved her life had been repossessed for lack of payment, and we've gotten to read about CEO Ralph de la Torre's vacationing in Versailles to watch the Olympics dressage competition (but of course!). I'm not sure how he and his fam got to France. It could have been one of his kabillion dollar yachts, or a private plane. Nothing but first class for good old Dr. Ralph while Sungida Rashid gets to bleed to death. 

Everything you read about Ralph de la Torre suggests he's little more than a greedy self-dealer, but he's still swanning around ritzing it up while the little people who were patients or staff in "his" hospitals suffered.

Some of the Massachusetts hospitals he put his reverse Midas touch on - reverse other than when it comes to himself - have been pulled into our existing not-for-profit systems. So most personnel will have jobs. But in the hospitals that have closed outright it's not all that clear what happens to the folks who worked there or otherwise supported the hospitals.

Sure, they can probably find work, but they'll lose seniority, benefits, pensions, severance protection, and everything else that comes with the job (including your community of colleagues), but doesn't survive a bankruptcy closure. 

It almost goes without saying that the two Steward hospitals that didn't get snapped up by the big healthcare systems are those that serve poor communities, including Carney Hospital in the Dorchester section of Boston.

Among the folks impacted by Carney's closing is Junhwa Lee whose family - Lee works alongside her husband and daughter - owned the pharmacy located within the walls of Carney. The news that Carney was going to close (which it did a month ago) came suddenly, giving the Lee family little time to respond. This is from an article that appeared in the Boston Globe a few days before Carney was shuttered. 

The short notice left Lee little time and few options for relocating and continuing to serve her patients, let alone recouping financial losses. She’s worried about what will happen not just for her family’s sake, but for

her patients’, many of whom are elderly, non-English speakers, and otherwise vulnerable.

“They trust us, they always tell us, ‘I will follow you wherever you go,’ so we’re very thankful about that, but we don’t know where to go,” Lee said last week, as the days until closure ticked by. ”There’s not enough time.”

Lee was able to find a less-than-ideal place to relocate, and the state regulators is helping the family accelerate the regulatory process involved with pharmacy relocation. But, still:

...she’s one of many small business owners and workers whose livelihoods have been threatened by the Steward collapse, watching helplessly as executives, investors, state officials, and a bankruptcy judge negotiate over the wreckage.

The article doesn't say, but what do you want to bet that Lee and her family are immigrants? And that this is a classic American immigrant story: come to the States, work hard, buy a business - Lee bought the pharmacy, where she'd worked for nearly a decade, just before things started to go south with Steward - only to end up on the receiving end of some All American unbridled capitalism shite. 

Junhwa Lee's is hardly the worst story to come out of Steward. (That would be Sungida Rashid. So far.)  And there are a lot of Carney workers who are a lot worse off. Lee is a pharmacist and business owner. She and her family will take a hit - a big one - but will likely be fine. 

Suppose you were a health care aide in your late 50's who's worked at Carney for decades, standing on your feet for long, tension-filled days, but working an easy commute from home. And looking forward to retiring in a few years on a modest Social Security check and a modest pension. Nothing flashy, nothing great. But enough to get modestly by. Will that meager pension survive bankruptcy? I believe the technical answer is 'hah!'

Then there are the poor people in the surrounding community who went to Carney for their healthcare? Sucks to be the old little-English-speaking grandpa in a wheelchair who'll now have to take three buses to get to his new healthcare spot.

Yeah, life is hard, but bums like Ralph de la Torre make it a lot harder for those who are already struggling. 

Chances are most of what he's done to suck the life (and money) out of Steward is perfectly legal. Just immoral. But maybe his self-dealing, his using Steward's coffers to fund his lifestyle-of-the-rich-and-famous, will catch up with him. 

I hope someone from Steward ends up paying for their sins, and my favorite candidate is Ralph de la Torre.