Hospital Looter Says 'Nah' to His Senate Subpoena [View all]

The Steward yacht collector tells Bernie Sanders that testifying next week could jeopardize ‘patient care,’ or something; meets bipartisan contempt.

by Maureen Tkacik September 5, 2024


Steward Health founder Ralph de la Torre, who bought hundreds of millions of dollars worth of private jets, yachts, and luxury real estate while his three dozen community hospitals went for years without basic surgical supplies, functioning elevators, or air-conditioning, announced Wednesday he is refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena—because testifying, his lawyers (dubiously) claim, might cause more hospitals to close.

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) voted 16-4 in July to serve de la Torre with its first subpoena since 1981 in the wake of news reports that the hospital chain, which de la Torre founded in 2010 with backing from the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, entered bankruptcy with $8 billion in debt while its CEO siphoned out more than a quarter-billion dollars and blew most of it on an epic midlife crisis, featuring a new wife 29 years his junior, a 500-acre ranch for her prizewinning racehorses, a $77,000-a-month detail for her security while traveling between the couple’s far-flung mansions, an Amalfi Coast wedding choreographed by Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton’s wedding planner, and not one but two yachts.

Since then, news reports have revealed that Steward, despite stiffing vendors left and right, even for the lunch meat in its hospital commissaries, had spent millions of dollars paying private spies to illegally surveil, harass, and even fabricate bogus criminal schemes supposedly perpetrated by various critics of the company, including a former executive, a British hedge fund manager, and a Maltese health minister.

https://prospect.org/health/2024-09-05-hospital-looter-says-nah-senate-subpoena-steward/