MPT’s single biggest tenant, representing about a quarter of its assets, is Steward Health, a struggling community hospital chain into which the REIT has plowed more than $5.5 billion since 2016. Steward’s former owner Cerberus Capital Management had extracted at least $800 million from the hospital chain by the time it sold out in 2021 to Steward founder Ralph de la Torre. Along with some senior managers, de la Torre bought out the private equity firm’s interest by taking out a $335 million loan with MPT, and shortly thereafter extracted their own nine-figure dividend from Steward. (Shortly after that, de la Torre bought a super-yacht.)

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“we can’t afford to privatize healthcare!”