Private equity-backed owner left Missouri hospital staff uninsured before they were unemployed

The U.S. Labor Department investigates Noble Health after former employees of its shuttered Missouri hospitals say the private equity-backed owner took money from their paychecks and then failed to fund their insurance coverage.
The first unexpected bill arrived in December, just weeks before Tara Lovell’s husband of 40 years died from bladder cancer.

Lovell worked as an ultrasound technologist at the local Audrain Community Hospital, in Mexico, Missouri, and was paying more than $400 a month for health insurance through her job. The town’s struggling hospital, the sole health care provider and major employer, had changed ownership in recent years, selling in March 2021 to Noble Health, a private equity-backed startup whose managers had never run a hospital.