Mike Ervin is a disability rights activist who has a monthly column in The Progressive magazine where he discusses disability issues, a subject that gets little attention in most mass media. He also writes a blog Smart Ass Cripple.

In the October/November 2024 issue of the magazine, he describes how private equity companies have entered the business of selling and servicing motorized wheelchairs. Two such companies Numotion and National Seating & Mobility (NSM) are owned by private equity firms and they have gobbled up a lot of the other companies.

A report “Private Equity in Durable Medical Equipment” put out the Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP) and the National Disability Rights Network, describes “How Private Equity Profits Off of Disabled and Chronically Ill Americans” and the frustrations that users face when their motorized wheelchairs break down and it takes weeks, even months, to get them repaired. It should be obvious that the deprivation of such an essential part of their lives, for even a day or two, causes immense hardship.

Ervin explains what is going on

Let me pause here to make sure everyone understands the obvious: The only reason private equity firms invest in anything is because they see it as a means of making a lot of money fast. That’s why these firms exist in the first place. If people get hurt in the process (such as employees losing their jobs or customers receiving increasingly lousy service), too bad; that’s just the way the capitalist cookie crumbles.
…

The report says that both companies, created through a series of acquisitions and mergers, have “gobbled up competitors and achieved dominant positions in the market.” Numotion was created by a merger of two smaller companies in 2013, and since then, it has acquired at least twenty-five of its competitors. Since a private equity firm bought NSM in 2013 (it’s owned by a different one now), it has acquired at least forty-two other companies, the report says.

With its “laser focus on boosting profits at all costs,” private equity “creates many of the problems for consumers through its own cost-cutting policies. People who rely on DME [durable medical equipment] should not pay the price for private equity’s gamble,” the report adds.

DME includes far more than just wheelchairs. Other essential tools that people with disabilities and chronic health conditions rely upon include walkers, infusion pumps, oxygen equipment, hospital beds, and sleep apnea equipment. At least fifty DME companies are owned by private equity firms, according to the report.

When you allow greedy private equity companies, whose sole goal is to make as much money as quickly as possible for their investors, into the health care field, the needs of the disabled people whom they are supposed to serve get shunted aside. Private equity firms should have no place in any program that provides vital services to people and the US Department’s Antitrust Division, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Department of Health and Human Services have started looking into this.

While strong government regulations can mitigate some of the harshest effects, stories like this should be compelling arguments for why basic health care services should be government-run and funded.