Private Equity Lands Billion-Dollar Backdoor Hospital Bailout

As the coronavirus pandemic upended the U.S. health-care system, EmCare IAH Emergency Physicians, a Houston staffing company owned by private equity firm KKR, made a little-noticed request of the government: It applied for a $317,379 interest-free loan.

KKR had for years paid lobbyists to fend off efforts to ban a practice known as surprise billing used by EmCare and other providers that has driven up the cost of health care. But that didn’t stop the U.S. Health and Human Services Department from approving the loan and almost 300 others totaling more than $60 million to subsidiaries of KKR-owned companies.

Shut out from ...