Claims And Issues

LOOK AT THIS MAN: WHAT SAYS $198,685,926/YEAR* TO YOU?

This is Jon Winkelried, the Chief Executive Officer of a Private Equity fund called TPG:

This picture of Jon and Abby Winkelried was supplied by the Winkelrieds to Vanderbilt University.

At TPG's Annual Meeting held this year on June 5, 2024, the following amendment available on TPG's website, was added to change its Articles of Incorporation.  It has the effect of eliminating, wherever possible, the liability of the Directors and Officers to TPG and its stockholders for breach of their fiduciary duties:

“7.1 Limited Liability of Directors and Officers. A director or officer of the Corporation shall not be liable to the Corporation or its stockholders for monetary damages for breach of fiduciary duty as a director or officer, respectively, except to the extent such exemption from liability or limitation thereof is not permitted under the DGCL as the same exists or may hereafter be amended. All references in this Section 7.1 to “officer” shall have the meaning ascribed to such term in Section 102(b)(7) of the DGCL.”

["DGCL" refers to Delaware General Corporation Law.  Here is a link to the Delaware Code provided by the State of Delaware.]

          From the perspective of TPG stockholders, the answer to the question posed at the outset had better be "yes."

          From the perspective of everyone else, what are you saying?

*Reported by Jeff Sommer, A New Measure Shows C.E.O. Pay at Even More Astronomical Levels, NEW YORK TIMES, online June 7, 2024 (may be behind a paywall).

Please read the disclaimer.  ©2024 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.

Health Care Changes? Uncle Sam Wants to Hear From YOU!

          Uncle Sam has a Request For Information (RFI), your information.  The RFI is only 12 pages long, which is not too long for Uncle Sam who can be very wordy as we all know.  Click on the blue underlined Request For Information to read all 12 pages of it.

         Here is the kind of thing that Uncle Sam wants to know about:

• Have there been changes in your health care since a provider was bought or merged or changed procedures?
• Has your work safety in the health care industry, or have your wages from a health care provider, changed in recent times?
• Is health care affordable for you as a patient or as a taxpayer, both, since one or more of your health care providers changed their business operations because they were bought by some other company, or because they bought some other company or merged with it somehow?

THEN UNCLE SAM WANTS TO HEAR FROM YOU!

          Tell the U.S. Department of Justice, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Federal Trade Commission!  You can send your comments to them by U.S. Mail, or you can leave your comments online at www.regulations.gov.  Put the Docket Number ATR 102 on your comments, and send them in before May 6, 2024.  That's it!

          Except to remember this, as Uncle Sam put it:

Privacy Note: The agencies’ general policy is to make all comments received from members of the public available for public viewing in their entirety on the Federal eRulemaking Portal at www.regulations.gov. Therefore, commenters should be careful to include in their comments only information that they wish to make publicly available.

Please read the disclaimer.  ©2024 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.

"KEEP PUBLIC HOSPITALS PUBLIC FOR THE PATIENTS' SAKE".

A joint editorial published in the Florida Sun Sentinel and the Orlando Sentinel newspapers says what needs to be said:  "Keep Public Hospitals Public For the Patients' Sake."  (The link is to The Florida Sun Sentinel website; the Orlando Sentinel has put the editorial behind a paywall with much of the rest of that newspaper.)

    The spur for the editorial is a bill that has been introduced in the Florida House by a wealthy member.  He is still in his first term but he has lost no time providing an opportunity for private equity and other investors to convert public hospitals to private profit centers.  The editorial pretty much says it all.

    The editorial's only drawback is that it is overly tentative, too iffy, whereas direct description is called for here.  For example, a quote from the "CEO of Florida's Safety Net Hospital Alliance" says that the bill "seems" to give a competitive advantage to the money-making funds that would take over public hospitals.

    Of course it "seems" to.  The bill was written to give them an advantage and to make it easier for the private investors to take over public hospitals.  In the Orlando Sentinel version, a sentence appears that is not found in the Florida Sun Sentinel's version, in which the Orlando paper weakly intones that "It's foolish to assume that private chains wouldn't come sniffing after such profitable targets."

    They already are.  The "private chains" highlighted in this timely editorial are already sniffing after public hospitals.  Thanks to these two newspapers for sniffing out these private chains of publicity-shy investors who are trying to change patient care into nothing but making profits.

Please read the disclaimer.   This article 2024 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.  The author has pointed to the growing issues presented by the takeover of hospitals, nursing homes, physicians' practices, and other public healthcare providers for private profit, in Dennis J. Wall, Catastrophe Claims / Insurance Coverage for Natural and Man-Made Disasters, Private Equity and Medicare, § 18C:6.50 (Thomson Reuters forthcoming in the Spring of 2024).