Hannah Levintova

Hannah Levintova

@h-lev.bsky.social

Special Projects Editor & reporter at Mother Jones focused on business investigations. Spreadsheets are my love language. hlevintova@motherjones.com, DM for Signal.

11.5K followers502 following68 posts

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1/ Last summer, @acleek.bsky.social and I started getting emails from staffers of a company called American Healthcare Systems. They told us that their hospitals were in financial chaos and that they were struggling to care for patients. So we started digging: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

motherjones.comA for-profit hospital slashed costs. Then a patient froze to death on its roof.A little-known company grew on promises to save distressed hospitals. Instead, it sunk them into financial chaos.

Hannah Levintova reposted

1/ Last summer, @acleek.bsky.social and I started getting emails from staffers of a company called American Healthcare Systems. They told us that their hospitals were in financial chaos and that they were struggling to care for patients. So we started digging: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

motherjones.comA for-profit hospital slashed costs. Then a patient froze to death on its roof.A little-known company grew on promises to save distressed hospitals. Instead, it sunk them into financial chaos.
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9/ But AHS is not another “profits over patients” story. It is the logical conclusion of health care’s long-running transformation into a seductive asset. Where hospitals have become slot machines for speculative investment—while patients find it ever harder to access good care.

1/ Last summer, @acleek.bsky.social and I started getting emails from staffers of a company called American Healthcare Systems. They told us that their hospitals were in financial chaos and that they were struggling to care for patients. So we started digging: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

motherjones.comA for-profit hospital slashed costs. Then a patient froze to death on its roof.A little-known company grew on promises to save distressed hospitals. Instead, it sunk them into financial chaos.
View full thread

6/ AHS CEO Michael Sarian has a long history of leaving bills unpaid. A hospital he ran in the 90s went bankrupt two years into his leadership. He then ran a California mall jewelry chain that skipped out on rent, stiffed suppliers, and also went bankrupt, owing about $6.4 million.

7/ Today, one of AHS’s hospitals has already closed, and its Illinois hospitals are on the brink of foreclosure. All this while Sarian summers in Cannes, flies on a private jet, owns several mansions, and reportedly used company funds to host his infant son’s baptism at the Beverly Wilshire hotel.

1/ Last summer, @acleek.bsky.social and I started getting emails from staffers of a company called American Healthcare Systems. They told us that their hospitals were in financial chaos and that they were struggling to care for patients. So we started digging: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

motherjones.comA for-profit hospital slashed costs. Then a patient froze to death on its roof.A little-known company grew on promises to save distressed hospitals. Instead, it sunk them into financial chaos.
View full thread

4/ Instead, AHS has slashed staffing and cut departments: At the Waukegan hospital, they furloughed nearly 80 employees a week before the patient ended up on the roof.

5/ AHS and its subsidiaries have also accrued an astronomical amount of unpaid bills. More than $116 million in taxes in Illinois alone. At least $65 million for everything from medical equipment to patient linens, according to claims in >100 lawsuits—a new one is filed nearly weekly at this point.

1/ Last summer, @acleek.bsky.social and I started getting emails from staffers of a company called American Healthcare Systems. They told us that their hospitals were in financial chaos and that they were struggling to care for patients. So we started digging: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

motherjones.comA for-profit hospital slashed costs. Then a patient froze to death on its roof.A little-known company grew on promises to save distressed hospitals. Instead, it sunk them into financial chaos.

2/ Our initial searching led us to something shocking: In January 2025, a 28-year-old patient had frozen to death on the roof of an AHS hospital in Waukegan, Illinois. This tragedy felt unfathomable. How does something like that happen at—of all places—a hospital?

3/ As it turned out, AHS is a young company. In just six years, it has grown from a small office building in an LA suburb to manage 18 facilities in six states, usually by making big promises to revitalize distressed hospitals. In a lot of places, those promises have not come to be.

Given the news that Trump has just appointed Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence, it feels timely to revisit the three different episodes of financial impropriety by Pulte that I’ve reported on in the just last six months! Let’s recap:/1

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Given the news that Trump has just appointed Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence, it feels timely to revisit the three different episodes of financial impropriety by Pulte that I’ve reported on in the just last six months! Let’s recap:/1

@whatsitlike.me reports on a new tactic favored by venture capital and private equity to shrink debt and walk away from risky investments virtually scot-free: Chapter 7 bankruptcy, using the example of the popular convenience chain, Foxtrot. /1 www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

motherjones.comHow Venture Capital Benefits From Zombie BankruptciesInside the rise and fall of Foxtrot, a popular convenience chain that liquidated—and then reopened a near carbon copy of itself.
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But within weeks of liquidation, Foxtrot announced that it was reopening. Its new iteration is a virtually identical version of its old self: same name, some same locations, same top executives. /4

@whatsitlike.me reports on a new tactic favored by venture capital and private equity to shrink debt and walk away from risky investments virtually scot-free: Chapter 7 bankruptcy, using the example of the popular convenience chain, Foxtrot. /1 www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

motherjones.comHow Venture Capital Benefits From Zombie BankruptciesInside the rise and fall of Foxtrot, a popular convenience chain that liquidated—and then reopened a near carbon copy of itself.

In 2024, Foxtrot filed for Chapter 7 after conditions at its stores had deteriorated: They’d failed more than a dozen health inspections, started missing bills, and ordered spending freezes. /3

Hannah Levintova reposted

SCOOP from @h-lev.bsky.social + @dfriedman.bsky.social: In 2023, Bill Pulte's charity donated $65K to a nonprofit called One World Love LLC. But records show One World Love is tied to a law firm that represented Trump in his efforts to prove election fraud and avoid paying damages after January 6.

motherjones.comWhat was Bill Pulte’s charity really funding with this mystery donation?It gave $65,000 to a nonprofit that records suggest is an LLC linked to Trump's legal defense.

Tresasury Sec Scott Bessent just told the House Financial Services Committee that there will be a Super Bowl ad this weekend for the new Trump accounts for babies. Who is paying for that pricey commercial?

A secret family office is quite something. Wow.

Robert Smith@bondhack.ft.com

🚨EPSTEIN'S SECRET FAMILY OFFICE REVEALED 🚨 Paul Barrett was Jeffrey Epstein's longtime private banker at JPMorgan What has never been reported until now: he set up a family office to trade on Epstein's behalf in the last years of the sex offender's life as.ft.com/r/8101f34a-f...

Wow, this story. It is so telling of the news landscape we live in that a not-so-mini bank bailout seems to be happening as we speak and...almost no one has noticed.

David Sirota@davidsirota.com

🚨NEWS: The Fed has quietly delivered nearly HALF A TRILLION DOLLARS of no-strings-attached bank bailouts in the last few months, according to documents reviewed by The Lever. The new bailouts are already 60% of the amount of the financial crisis TARP bailout. www.levernews.com/the-federal-...

Hannah Levintova reposted

The administration is freezing $10B in child care and anti-poverty funding in five states—putting care for hundreds of thousands of working-class families at risk. Cuts or delays this large will strain providers, disrupt quality care for children, and could force working parents out of their jobs.

More Perfect Union@moreperfectunion.bsky.social

BREAKING: The Trump administration is suspending $10 billion intended for child care and poor families in five blue states. www.axios.com/2026/01/05/t...

YES. Thayer Street businesses need our $ right now and East Side Pockets is the absolute GOAT. My go-to order is a gyro-falafel combo wrap! Also low-key the best waffle fries in Providence.

Philip Eil@phileil.bsky.social

I'm not an influencer, and I don't aspire to be one. But I will summon whatever online power I have to help keep Thayer Street businesses afloat.

Hannah Levintova reposted

Providence people - I’m working on a story about how residents first learned about the Brown shooting. Word of mouth, social media, official alerts? Feel free to DM me if you’re willing to share your experience (would need to use your full name)

And if I may—I deliberately put a lot of links to local coverage into this piece, from The Providence Journal especially. In moments like these, please read and subscribe to the local journalists doing this work! www.providencejournal.com/live-story/n...

providencejournal.comSearch for Brown University shooting continues into 5th day. Live updatesCanvassing is expected to be ongoing today in Providence as the search continues for the Brown University shooter.

Hannah Levintova reposted

The longer that the Brown shooter goes un-caught, the more room there will be for the spread of conspiracy theories, misinformation, AI junk, and all manner of racist/xenophobic speculation. This worries me. And we're already seeing it.

Hannah Levintova reposted

Replying to @idgordon.bsky.social

Why does it matter that Pulte promoted $ZACK to his 3 million followers on X? As one expert told @h-lev.bsky.social, "The only people who make money are the people who usually get in before the coin is even launched.”