Connecticut’s Attorney General William Tong is suing the Trump administration for withholding funds from education, Planned Parenthood and disaster relief. He is also suing this adminstration for restricting health care to transgender youth. Whether these cases have merit remains to be seen.

But there is one group that Tong has so far given a free pass: the private equity firms who ravaged Connecticut hospitals while enriching themselves with hundreds of millions of dollars.

First some background. Prospect Medical Holdings is a private healthcare company that purchases hospitals “with a core mission to provide quality, compassionate, and accessible healthcare.”

In actuality, their goal is to buy hospitals, suck out the equity and pay investors and company executives gargantuan sums of money.

How did this happen? In 2010, a private equity group, Leonard Green and Partners, bought a 61% stake in Prospect Medical Holdings for $363 million and assumed their $158 million debt. They then went on a rampage, buying hospitals across the country. In Connecticut, they purchased Manchester Memorial Hospital and Rockville Hospital for $105 million and Waterbury Hospital for an undisclosed amount.

These hospitals owned the land and buildings in which they were housed. But Prospect Medical Holdings sold this property along with that of other hospitals across the country for $1.4 billion to a REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust) called Medical Properties Trust (MPT). Thus, the hospitals now had a huge expense they did not have before, monthly rent. Meanwhile, Leonard Green and Partners used Prospect Medical Holdings as the conduit to receive the money for these land purchases along with the cash flow from the hospital to borrow $1.1 billion. They paid off previous debts and then the executives of these companies took obscene salaries.

The Prospect Medical Holdings CEO Sam Lee took home $128 million! Leonard Green and Partners, the majority owner of Prospect Medical Holdings, received $658 million in dividends and management fees during its ownership of the hospital chain. While there are no public disclosures on how much the executives of Leonard Green and Partners pocketed, there are two managing partners, Jonathan Sokoloff and John G. Danhakl. Sokoloff’s net worth is estimated to be $150 million (although it is probably much higher) and Danhakl is worth a cool $1.7 billion. It’s safe to say these two each put at least $100 million in their pockets.

Meanwhile, the once-thriving 102-bed Rockland Hospital that served the working-class Vernon community now only offers an emergency room, one-day surgical service and behavioral health services. And at Manchester Memorial doctors have not been paid, nurses are short-staffed and working like dogs while Prospect Medical Holdings stopped funding their pensions.

And what happened when the staff tried to receive their compensation? If you said Prospect Medical Holdings declared bankruptcy, go to the head of the class!

So now what happens to these hospitals? Either some other conglomerate buys them, or they must close. Yale attempted to do so but no agreement could be reached. Prospect Medical Holdings’ bankruptcy caused two hospitals in the Philadelphia area to close and then patients had to pay $75 to get access to their records.

And it gets worse. Waterbury Hospital owes the Town of Waterbury $29 million in back taxes. But with Prospect Medical Holdings in bankruptcy, the taxpayers will get the bill.

And to add insult to injury, the bankruptcy judge approved an incentive program for six top executives, including undisclosed salary boosts, aimed at retaining key personnel during the hospital-sale process. Thus, the same people who raped the hospitals will generate huge fees by trying to sell the hospitals they destroyed. You can’t make this up.

Tong simply cannot allow this without a fight. Leonard Green and Partners must be sued along with Sokoloff, Danhakl and Lee personally – preferably in the Waterbury Courthouse.

The problem is that any lawyer reading this article, including Tong will say, “What these guys did may have been immoral, but it is not illegal. There is no case here.”

But perhaps with some creative legal thinking, a statute can be found or least possibly interpreted to mean that private equity firms cannot destroy the health care of working class communities so that their executives can buy bigger yachts.

Tong graduated from Phillips Academy, Brown University (with honors) and the University of Chicago Law School. Even if one does not agree with his politics, he must be a sharp guy. He should be able to figure out how to make a strong case while showcasing the malfeasance of these executives and letting a jury decide. Even the threat of a jury trial and the adverse publicity these executives will receive could cause them to settle for a large sum that could be used to improve health care in these communities.

And even if Tong does not win, he will become a hero to many voters outside of the Democratic bailiwick. Even hardcore Republicans are disgusted by the behavior of these plutocrats. The destruction of community hospitals by avaricious private equity executives who game the system cannot go unchallenged.

Joe Bentivegna, MD, is an ophthalmologist in Rocky Hill.