Private equity companies have no ethical or legal duties to patients and strive to maximize financial returns for their investors.

Risk-benefit analyses are part of most health decisions and are investigated visually and narratively in this comic.

Private equity investments in health care have grown to over $750 billion in the past decade and include every segment of the US health sector.

Private equity firms exacerbate health inequity by driving hospital closures in historically underserved communities. Now nonprofit health systems are also vulnerable.

Capital and staff shortages have forced many rural hospitals to close. Private equity investment in rural hospitals has been one solution to these problems.

As private equity funds acquire a growing share of America’s health care system, their focus has expanded from hospitals and nursing homes to physician practices.

One driver of the corporatization of medicine has been private equity firms’ acquisitions of physician practices.

Private equity investments in health care raise several clinical and ethical questions about private equity’s influence on clinicians’ practices.

Private equity margin maximization and profit-making strategies focus on acquisition, short-term ownership, and sale of health care entities, including residency program opportunities.

This article explains how some investment practices of private equity firms generate profit by taking advantage of inequitably underserved patients in the US health care system.