Murphy blasts Prospect Holdings, took its PAC money in last campaign.

Senator Chris Murphy’s indignation often comes with a side dish. The Democrat seeking a third term sometimes inserts a general condemnation of capitalism when he fulminates. Sometimes he dresses up his tirade as contempt for neoliberalism.

Last week, Murphy used his spot on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee to criticize Prospect Medical Holdings, owner of Manchester Memorial, Rockville, and Waterbury hospitals. The saga of Prospect operating those three for-profit hospitals has been fraught with difficulties. The proposed sale of them to Yale New Haven has been worse.

Murphy is furious over the large mortgages ($1.12 billion) the company took in 2018 and used a large chunk of the money ($457 million) for dividend and executive compensation.

In the 2018 campaign cycle, when Murphy was seeking his second term, the Prospect Medical Holdings PAC made contributions to four candidates, all senators, one Republican and three Democrats. One of the Democrats was Murphy. He accepted $2,500 from the Prospect Medical Holdings PAC on October 10, 2017, a year after it made its Connecticut acquisitions.

Prospect Medical’s business practices should have surprised no one. It is not capitalism that failed, it is the state’s healthcare regulators. Much of the company’s web of buying, borrowing, selling and leasing real estate can be found on public land records.

Rhode Island hospital regulators took steps to protect the state’s medical system from Prospect Medical engaging in asset stripping. Connecticut’s did not.

In 2017, before the deluge, all that mattered was the PAC contribution.

Published September 17, 2024.