A bill introduced in the California Legislature in February had a simple but significant goal: to force more scrutiny of private equity investors as they increasingly encroach on the state’s health care industry.
Given private equity’s history of often-disastrous outcomes in the health care field, both in patient care and cost, such legislation was reasonable. The bill, as originally written by Assemblymember Jim Wood (D-Healdsburg) and supported by state Attorney General Rob Bonta, would have given Bonta’s office wide latitude to stop or place conditions on the kinds of private equity takeovers that the AG feared would worsen health care in the state.
