PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla., June 10, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- In a new opinion piece released today as a public statement, prominent Florida trial attorney Sean C. Domnick is calling out private equity and corporate power in health care, arguing that the business of medicine has overtaken the mission of healing. From Florida to Texas to Oregon, Domnick chronicles how profit-driven motives are degrading patient care—and why courtroom accountability is now the last meaningful line of defense.

The full op-ed, titled "Wall Street Is Practicing Medicine—And Patients Are Paying the Price," is included in its entirety below. Please contact us if you would like to interview Attorney Domnick on this issue.

Wall Street Is Practicing Medicine—And Patients Are Paying the Price

By Sean C. Domnick

Every so often, we catch a fleeting glimpse of who's really calling the shots in American health care—not your doctor, not your insurer, and certainly not you. Behind the exam room curtain and beyond the hospital billing department, private equity firms and corporate conglomerates are actually pulling the strings. And sometimes, when they get sloppy, we get a rare look behind the curtain and see just how deep the rot goes.

Let's start in Florida, where Centene—the nation's largest Medicaid managed care organization—was forced to pay over $1 billion in settlements for profiting off drug rebate kickbacks not just in Florida but in over 20 states. Instead of all that money going back to the taxpayers and patients who were shortchanged, $10 million of it was quietly funneled to a "charitable foundation" tied to the Florida governor's wife. It's the political equivalent of finding a turtle on a fencepost—you know it didn't get there by itself.

Over in Texas, lawmakers were stunned to learn that Centene's subsidiary, Superior HealthPlan, hired private investigators to dig into their personal lives. Why? Presumably to keep those same lawmakers in line while Centene clung to its highly lucrative Medicaid contract. But it gets worse: Superior's hired guns also "investigated" Medicaid patients with disabilities—people whose complex medical needs make them expensive to care for and, therefore, a threat to the bottom line. If those invasions of privacy delayed or denied essential care, the resulting harm can't be undone. But don't worry—Texas's impeached, oft-indicted Attorney General (now running for U.S. Senate) has launched an investigation.

This is not an isolated story. Across Florida, California, and Colorado, we've interviewed doctors being strong-armed by private equity firms—often in league with major health plans—into selling their practices for pennies on the dollar. Their tactics would make the Mob blush: sign here or we'll cut off your referrals, cancel your contracts, and bury your practice in red tape.

Meanwhile, Steward Health Care—one of the largest for-profit hospital systems in the country—filed for bankruptcy, stiffing over 100,000 creditors on $9 billion in unpaid bills. While the patients and providers left behind scramble to pick up the pieces, Steward's real estate partners reportedly tripled their investment. The CEO? He walked away with $8 million, making him possibly the highest-paid executive in Alabama. You can't make this stuff up. Actually, you don't have to—just ask the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.

I believe that allowing private equity to play a central role in our healthcare system puts lives at risk. A year-long investigation by Mother Jones supports this thesis, having uncovered 468 lawsuits linked to wrongful death, malpractice, and personal injury at Steward hospitals. As trial lawyers, we know that number barely scratches the surface—most patients harmed in these facilities never get their day in court. They're too poor, too intimidated, or simply too exhausted to take on billion-dollar behemoths in a legal system that was never built for them.

In the immortal words of Casablanca, we are "shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!"

But let's be honest—we're not shocked. We've been here before, in quiet hospital rooms where families whisper around machines, wondering if the delay in treatment cost them a loved one. We've held the hands of patients who were denied care not because it wasn't needed, but because it wasn't profitable. We've seen the kind of suffering that doesn't make headlines—only lawsuits, if the victims are lucky enough to find a lawyer who'll take the case.

This isn't bad luck or bureaucratic error. It's a functional business model.

What happened with Centene is just one tile in a much larger mosaic—a picture of a health care system increasingly built to serve investors, not patients. These companies don't just buy hospitals and health plans. They buy silence. They buy influence. And when money doesn't work, intimidation does. If they can't own you, they'll investigate you. If they can't threaten your livelihood, they'll dig through your past.

Is it fair to say that no one gets the gravity of what's going on here? As The Wall Street Journal reported in May, an Oregon bill aiming to impose the nation's toughest restrictions on private equity control of healthcare practices is headed to the governor's desk, signaling a rare but significant pushback against corporate influence in medicine.

Yet in Texas, Florida, and the nation writ large, the system is rigged for shareholders and the last place left for accountability is the courthouse. The courthouse is the last stand. It's where you can still fight back. It's where class actions and mass tort lawsuits can shine light where regulators have chosen to look away.

Because if we don't push back now—literally and exactly now—the question isn't who will control your health care, it's who will survive it.

About Sean C. Domnick
Sean C. Domnick is a Shareholder at Rafferty Domnick Cunningham & Yaffa, a preeminent national boutique law firm based in Palm Beach Gardens and Pensacola, Florida.

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