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“We have long been concerned about the nefarious role of private equity in our economy,” the delegates said in the letter. “The dire threat of Steward’s collapse appears to be a textbook example of the grave risks posed by a private equity takeover of the health care system.”
A spokesperson for Cerberus was not immediately available for comment.
Previously, Steward has blamed its financial challenges in part on the relatively low rates it receives for services to Medicaid patients. And even for patients with more lucrative commercial insurance, Steward has said, its hospitals still are paid less than others in the market.
The letter comes amid increasing struggles for Steward Health Care, which is facing numerous lawsuits over alleged nonpayment to vendors, closing hospitals in other states, and having difficulty making rent payments. As reported by the Boston Globe, executives have been in talks with Massachusetts state officials over possible solutions to their financial crisis, which have included options ranging from selling or closing some hospitals or services, to at times requests for state financial support.
The Dallas-based health system, which counts nine hospitals in Massachusetts and more than 30 nationally, has so far announced the closure of one facility, New England Sinai Hospital, a rehabilitation hospital in Stoughton. Additional closures have not been announced, and the company has insisted that none are imminent.
Still, financial challenges have created problems at facilities that remain. Supply shortages have been so pervasive that Mass General Brigham removed some of its doctors for a time from performing surgeries at some Steward hospitals. Since late January, the Department of Public Health has been doing daily monitoring at many Steward hospitals to check on staffing and service availability, monitoring they increased this week.
The note to Cerberus was signed by the entire all-Democratic, delegation, including US Senators Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey, and US Representatives Richard Neal, James McGovern, Stephen Lynch, William Keating, Katherine Clark, Seth Moulton, Lori Trahan, Ayanna Pressley, and Jake Auchincloss. According to the delegation, the current financial precarity was created — if not magnified — by Cerberus’s actions.
Warren’s office in particular has targeted private equity firms in legislation she’s filed, including the Stop Wall Street Looting Act, which among other things would have made private equity firms jointly liable for all the debt incurred by the acquired entity. Warren has filed such legislation in 2018 and 2021, though it did not pass.
Named after the mythical three-headed dog guarding the gates of the underworld, Cebrerus became involved with Steward at its founding. As detailed by the letter, Cerberus invested $246 million through the purchase of Caritas Cristi Health Care in 2010, rechristened the system as Steward, and left CEO Dr. Ralph de la Torre in charge.
Six years later, Cerberus-owned Steward signed a $1.25 billion deal with Medical Properties Trust, in which Steward sold its hospital properties to MPT, locking Steward into a multiyear, multimillion dollar lease payment. The deal returned Cerberus’s initial investment, but the private equity firm still retained a controlling stake in the company.
In May 2020, Cerberus exited entirely, transferring its ownership stake to a group of Steward doctors in exchange for a note that would provide regular interest payments. Steward borrowed $335 million from MPT in January 2021 to buy the note.
“Over the six-year period, Steward took on over a billion dollars in liabilities — while Cerberus executives profited handsomely,” the letter states. “The net result of these transactions appears to be an unfolding tragedy. Cerberus and its private equity executives received $800 million in profits, while thousands of Massachusetts health care workers’ jobs are at risk and 10 communities in the Commonwealth face the potential closure of hospitals that are debt-ridden, unable to pay their bills, and teetering on the financial brink.”
The letter comes after the delegation sent a similar missive to de la Torre in late January, asking for a seat at the table as Steward discussed its plans with state officials, and wanting a briefing on the health system’s financial position and the status of its facilities in Massachusetts.
Lynch said his staff and others met with Steward executives and were informed that Steward’s intent was to exit the Massachusetts health market. Of the remaining eight hospitals that will exist after the rehab hospital’s closure, four — Nashoba Valley Medical Center, St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center, Holy Family Hospital, and Norwood Hospital — had to be transferred urgently.
Norwood Hospital has been temporarily closed since 2020 due to catastrophic flooding.
Lynch said at the root of the financial struggle was the for-profit structure of Steward.
“They have two missions — they have to satisfy the obligations they have to their private equity firm and shareholders to generate a profit,” he said in an interview. “And then they got another mission, to provide high quality health care. Sometimes those two missions are at odds. There is friction between them. That’s at the root of this. It’s their business model.”
Jessica Bartlett can be reached at jessica.bartlett@globe.com. Follow her @ByJessBartlett.
BROCKTON, Mass. (WJAR) — Four people were shot on Friday night after hundreds had gathered to watch a World Cup match in Massachusetts.
Police said the shooting happened just before midnight on Main Street in Brockton.
Officers said the victims were taken to the hospital.
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Police have not said if there were any arrests.
BOSTON, (WPRI) — A somerset man has been cited for allegedly causing a deadly wrong-way crash in Boston late Saturday night.
Just before midnight, troopers from the H9 Barracks were called for a report of a multi-vehicle crash on I-93 North before Exit 15A.
A preliminary investigation showed that the driver of a 2004 Cadillac Escalade, identified as 81-year-old Antone Carvalho, of Somerset, entered Route 93 North at Exit 15B and drove southbound in the northbound lanes.
Two vehicles, a Honda Odyssey and an Audi A4, attempted to avoid the Carvalho and crashed into each other.
Four people in the Honda Odyssey, were taken to a Boston-area hospital for evaluation.
Shortly after the initial crash, police say Carvalho collided head-on with a Chevrolet Cruze.
Carvalho and the other driver were taken to Boston-area hospitals for their injuries
The driver of the Chevrolet Cruze, identified as a man in his 20’s from Haverhill, died from his injuries.
Carvalho will be issued a summons to appear in court at a later date.
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Norman Rockwell painted Stockbridge so often that the real Main Street now looks like one of his canvases come to life. That is the trick these Massachusetts towns pull off. A whaling-era cobblestone lane on Nantucket and a Revolutionary common in Concord do the same thing in different accents. Each one packs its best landmarks into a few blocks you can cover on foot. The eight New England streets here all sit under 50,000 residents and earn their reputation the honest way.
Fewer than 2,000 people live in Stockbridge, yet its Main Street may be the most recognizable in the state. Credit Norman Rockwell, who lived here and painted the view down the street so many times it lodged in the national memory. The white clapboard buildings, the old inns, and the big shade trees are all still right where he left them, and people still use them.
The Red Lion Inn has welcomed guests on this corner since 1773, and its long front porch is the street’s anchor in every sense. A short walk away, the Norman Rockwell Museum holds the largest collection of his work and even his relocated studio. Naumkeag adds a Gilded Age cottage with terraced gardens climbing the hillside. Come December, the town recreates Rockwell’s famous “Main Street at Christmas” scene with vintage cars parked along the curb, which is about as close as a real place gets to stepping into a painting.
Edith Wharton built her dream house just outside Lenox, and the writer’s eye for proportion seems to have rubbed off on the whole town. The center is small enough to park once and walk, with bookshops, cafes, and galleries shoulder to shoulder under the trees. Under 10,000 people live here, and the place wears its Berkshire elegance lightly.
The Mount, Wharton’s 1902 estate, runs as a house museum and public garden and hosts readings and outdoor events all summer. Ventfort Hall, a Jacobean-style mansion built for a sister of J.P. Morgan, fills in more of the Gilded Age story. Just up the road, Tanglewood draws crowds every July and August as the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, so a quiet shopping street can be ten minutes from a world-famous concert lawn. Few towns this size balance that kind of culture against that little traffic.
On April 19, 1775, the shot heard round the world was fired a short walk from where Concord shoppers now buy their morning coffee. That is the strange gift of this town. Its pretty village center sits below 20,000 residents, and its old houses, churches, and civic buildings look calm until you remember what happened among them.
Minute Man National Historical Park preserves the battle road and the fields where colonial militia turned back British regulars. Old North Bridge marks the spot itself, with Daniel Chester French’s Minute Man statue standing guard. Concord also raised more than its share of writers, and Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House, where she wrote “Little Women,” still opens for tours. Two miles south, Walden Pond holds the woods Thoreau made famous, an easy swim or walk that closes the loop between the town’s history and its quieter ideas.
The streets in Marblehead’s Old Town were laid out for foot traffic and fishing nets, not cars, so they bend and narrow and dead-end at the water. The town tops 20,000 residents now, but the historic core feels far older and more intimate. Washington Street and the lanes around it run past brick sidewalks and preserved houses, with the harbor flashing into view between rooftops.
The Jeremiah Lee Mansion, a grand Georgian house built in 1768 for the wealthiest merchant in colonial Massachusetts, still keeps its original hand-painted English wallpaper. Old Burial Hill rises above town with weathered colonial gravestones and one of the best harbor views around. Abbot Hall, the brick town hall with the clock tower, houses the original “Spirit of ’76” painting. Walk the waterfront and the reason for the whole town becomes obvious. Marblehead grew up facing the sea, and it never turned away.
Federal-era sea captains built their fortunes at the mouth of the Merrimack, and their three-story brick blocks still line the streets of downtown Newburyport. The Main Street feeling here spreads across several streets rather than one. Under 20,000 residents keep the center humming, with shops and restaurants filling old facades right down to the riverbank.
Market Square and State Street form the heart of it, a tight grid of brick that survived a great fire and a wave of 1970s urban renewal to come out the other side intact. The Custom House Maritime Museum, set in a granite 1835 building, tells the port’s seafaring story. Waterfront Park gives you a bench and a view of the boats. A few miles out on Plum Island, the Parker River refuge at Joppa Flats turns the same trip into prime birdwatching, so a downtown afternoon can end with herons instead of storefronts.
A plain red fishing shack on a granite pier may be the most painted building in America, and it sits right in Rockport’s harbor. Locals call it Motif No. 1, after an art teacher who got tired of seeing his students paint it. The town runs under 10,000 residents and folds its best parts into a few tight blocks by the water.
Main Street leads to Bearskin Neck, a skinny peninsula crammed with galleries, candy shops, and lobster shacks that ends with the open Atlantic. Front Beach puts sand and water within a short stroll of the shops. The Shalin Liu Performance Center, opened in 2010, built a concert hall with a wall of glass behind the stage, so the ocean becomes the backdrop for a string quartet. You can wander from a storefront to a harbor view to a gallery without ever breaking stride.
Great Barrington wired the first downtown in the world lit entirely by alternating current, back in 1886, and the place has kept that forward lean ever since. Under 10,000 residents fill a center that feels genuinely busy, with restaurants, bookstores, and galleries spread along Main Street and Railroad Street. It looks like an old Berkshire town and behaves like a young one.
The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, a restored 1905 theater, books films, concerts, and live broadcasts year-round. The Housatonic River Walk threads a half-mile greenway along the water right behind Main Street, the work of volunteers who spent decades clearing a once-polluted bank. Just outside town, Monument Mountain offers a short climb to a quartzite ridge and a long view over the Housatonic River valley, the same trail Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne hiked together in 1850.
Whaling money built Nantucket’s Main Street, and the cobblestones laid to keep wagon wheels out of the mud are still there to rattle your suitcase. The island stays well under 50,000 year-round residents even at the height of summer. Brick sidewalks, weathered shingles, and window boxes give the downtown the texture of an old port rather than a new outdoor mall.
The Whaling Museum, set in an 1847 candle factory, explains how a small island once lit the lamps of the world, right down to a full sperm whale skeleton. Brant Point Lighthouse marks the harbor entrance and ranks among the most photographed beacons in New England. Straight Wharf keeps the working waterfront within steps of the shops, and the Oldest House, built in 1686, anchors the streetscape in the island’s first century. Every detail down to the gray shingles seems to point back to the same seafaring story.
What ties these eight together is not a shared look but a shared honesty. Stockbridge and Lenox lean on Berkshire culture, Concord carries the weight of 1775, and Great Barrington keeps reinventing itself. Marblehead, Newburyport, Rockport, and Nantucket all grew up facing salt water and never lost the habit. The best Main Streets here are not stage sets. They are working downtowns that happen to be worth a long, slow look.
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