KKR loaded America’s biggest ER staffing company with $8 billion in debt. When the math broke, the patients did not stop showing up. Harvard counted the deaths.
Private equity firm KKR acquired Envision Healthcare for $9.9 billion in 2018, loading the company with $8 billion in new debt. Five years later, Envision filed for bankruptcy listing $7 billion in liabilities. A 2025 Harvard study tied private-equity acquisition of hospitals to measurable rises in emergency-room deaths. The numbers in the bankruptcy filings are abstract. The body count is not.