A new report from The Bull Moose Project warns that private equity firms have quietly seized control of major segments of America’s cancer care system, triggering a dangerous shift from patient-focused treatment to profit-driven operations. The conservative watchdog group says the result is rising costs, declining care quality, and growing threats to physician independence.
According to the report, investment groups have spent the last two decades acquiring and consolidating oncology practices, diagnostic imaging centers, specialty pharmacies, and billing operations into large corporate structures. These deals have restructured cancer care delivery in the United States, moving decision-making power away from doctors and toward corporate executives.
Cancer treatment, the report explains, has become increasingly attractive to private equity due to high and consistent demand and Medicare rules that reward the use of expensive drugs and procedures. These incentives, combined with a fragmented medical system, have allowed investor-backed firms to purchase hundreds of cancer practices nationwide with little public attention.
However, the Bull Moose Project claims that the consequences of this financialization are far from benign. The report cites studies indicating that private equity ownership leads to steeper price increases in oncology than in any other medical field. It also links private equity-run facilities to increased patient complication rates and, in some cases, higher mortality rates.
Physicians working under corporate ownership are reportedly pressured to increase patient volume and prioritize costlier treatments. These practices may improve revenue but can undermine the doctor-patient relationship and erode treatment outcomes. Rural and low-income communities face the worst of the fallout, with reduced treatment options and fragile access to life-saving services.
The report also highlights a troubling string of scandals involving private equity-backed oncology providers, ranging from fraudulent billing and kickback schemes to bankruptcies and data breaches that have left patients without care.
Lawmakers have started to scrutinize these consolidations more closely, with new calls for antitrust enforcement and oversight of corporate medical ownership. Still, the report notes that industry lobbyists are actively fighting proposed reforms.
The Bull Moose Project concludes that without decisive regulatory action, cancer care in America risks devolving into a profit-maximizing enterprise at the expense of vulnerable patients.
