Endless waiting.
Inadequate care.
Preventable deaths.

Sharp Healthcare chronically short changes patient care. In 2 years, they’ve collected over $140 million in private donations but haven’t addressed the severe short-staffing crisis in their facilities. San Diego is one of the most expensive cities in California and workers make as little as $20 an hour with many working second jobs just to make ends meet. Low pay makes it extremely difficult to hire and retain caregivers. Meanwhile, executive compensation has ballooned. In 2022, Sharp’s top executives were paid a combined $12 million. On top of that, Sharp faces a class action lawsuit alleging that patients’ confidential information was shared with Facebook [1].

Prime Healthcare has a history of doing everything it can to extract as much money as possible from its patients. That includes lying to patients about how sick they are, to keep them in the hospital for costlier procedures. Prime’s practices are so bad that it has been sued by the government three times in the past six years – for a total of nearly $100 million in settlements. That’s money that should be dedicated to improving patient care.

Based in San Diego, Scripps Health operates in one of the most expensive cities in the entire country. But instead of paying their frontline healthcare workers enough to make ends meet, they’re handing executives multi-million dollar compensation packages. In 2022, their CEO alone was paid nearly $2.8 million. Meanwhile, workers are leaving due to low pay, contributing to an ongoing short staffing crisis that jeopardizes patient care.

Fresenius Medical Care, a for-profit dialysis provider, is one of the few options for dialysis patients in California. Fresenius owns more than 1 in 5 (22%) clinics in the state and treats 38% of patients nationwide. The company rakes in hundreds of millions in profits every year, including $710 million in 2022. But where does the money go? Their CEO certainly gets taken care of; he made over $5 million in 2022 alone. For patients and caregivers, it’s a different story. Clinics across the state are severely understaffed, with Fresenius refusing to raise wages to hire and retain caregivers – unless they’re legally required to. Instead, along with other dialysis companies, Fresenius has spent over $200 million fighting laws that would improve patient safety and address the understaffing crisis.

With 53 facilities and 800 full time employees in California alone, Satellite Healthcare is a major provider for dialysis patients. Their industry is also a major moneymaker. With their tens of millions in profits, they’re able to give their CEO $1.5 million in annual compensation. Meanwhile, they’ve consistently underinvested in patients and their caregivers. Workers make as little as $17 an hour – $3 less than what fast food workers will make early next year.

In recent years, Providence has worked tirelessly to extract all of the money it can from patients. After partnering with profit-chasing multinational management firm McKinsey in 2018, Providence launched a program called “Rev-Up” that targeted patients – particularly low income ones – with predatory, and sometimes illegal, debt-collection practices.