McKinsey and Providence colluded to force poor patients into destitution

“How would you like to pay that today?”

Cory Doctorow
6 min readSep 25, 2022

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A collage. On the left is an image of a cigar-chomping plutocrat in a top hat. He stands at a control box whose lever is fashioned into a dollar-sign. The control box bears the logo of McKinsey and Company. In one gloved hand, he holds aloft a sad, cloth-capped young man on crutches. On the right is an ogrish thug wielding a club and holding out his free hand in a ‘gimme’ gesture. He wears a doctor’s reflector around his head. Behind them is a hospital ward. On the wall of the hospital ward is t

Providence is a health giant whose anchor is a network of Catholic hospitals. They colluded with McKinsey to steal from their poorest patients, by deceiving them about their eligibility for free care, saddling poor, sick people with crushing debts:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/24/business/nonprofit-hospitals-poor-patients.html

Though Providence is nominally a nonprofit, but it sits atop a $10 billion private equity fund that it invests in unrelated sectors. Its nonprofit status lets it evade $1.2 billion per year in federal and state taxes. The company stole $500,000,000 in US covid relief intended for hospitals in danger of closure. Its CEO makes $10,000,000 per year.

As a nonprofit, Providence is required to provide free care to low-income patients. In 2018, the company retained the services of McKinsey and Co, a scandal-haunted global consulting firm with a long track record of designing criminal strategies for its clients. There are many ghastly examples of this conduct — for example, helping the Saudi government hunt down, torture and murder dissidents:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/22/business/dealbook/mckinsey-saudi-dissidents.html

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