Authorizing the President of the Senate to Certify the Report of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions of the Senate Regarding the Refusal of Dr. Ralph De La Torre to Appear and Testify Before the Committee

Floor Speech

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Mr. MARKEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, very much. Thank you for your great leadership on this issue. Thanks to Senator Cassidy. We have made this bipartisan from the very beginning in order to ensure that the American public can completely understand what has happened to this Steward Health Care chain, and I thank him for the leadership in holding Dr. Ralph de la Torre accountable for his greed and shining a light on the deadly consequences that result from the involvement of for-profit forces in our healthcare system.

Steward Health Care declared bankruptcy in May. It was a culmination of a financial tragedy. Over the past decade, Steward, led by its founder and CEO, Dr. Ralph de la Torre, and his corporate enablers, looted hospitals across the country for their own profit. And while they got rich, workers, patients, and communities suffered.

Nurses paid out of pocket for cardboard bereavement boxes for the babies to help grieving parents who had just lost a newborn. Hospital beds collapsed underneath patients. Patients died alone in hallways.

The Boston Globe Spotlight team has laid out the details in eye- watering fashion.

Meanwhile, Ralph de la Torre and his corporate cronies got just what they wanted: hundreds of millions of dollars in profit, yachts, private jets, luxury vacations. They used hospitals to fund their own episode of ``Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.'' And its star is CEO Dr. Ralph de la Torre.

Today, we are here because Dr. de la Torre has yet to answer for what he has perpetrated. I asked him to appear before my Primary Health and Retirement Subcommittee in April in Boston. He declined. He refused.

Senators Sanders and Cassidy invited Dr. de la Torre to testify in July here in Washington. He declined. He refused.

On July 25, the committee issued a legal order for him to appear. He ignored it. He refused.

Dr. de la Torre is using his blood-soaked gains to hide behind corporate lawyers instead of responding to the U.S. Senate's demand for actions.

But while he tries to run and hide, Dr. de la Torre is revealing himself for what he truly is: a physician who placed personal gain over his duty to do no harm.

The Senate has not made a criminal contempt referral in more than 50 years, since 1971. It is a rare move for the rare degree of callousness, cruelty, and cowardliness that Dr. de la Torre has demonstrated.

In the face of all of the mismanagement, health workers fulfill their sacred responsibility to their patients and to their communities. They cared for young and old, held grieving families' hands, and responded in people's greatest moments of fear and vulnerability.

And now workers and communities will spend years cleaning up Ralph de la Torre's disaster all in order to ensure that they will be protecting patient care.

The rich don't need to use communities as a safety net for their wealth, but that is how Dr. de la Torre used these hospitals and communities--including in Massachusetts--and sacrificed community health in the process. They are rightly outraged in those communities, and I am outraged for them.

For them and for everyone who has suffered due to Ralph de la Torre's greed and Steward's collapse, I hope the Department of Justice will move swiftly to bring charges against him.

To Dr. de la Torre, you cannot use your millions to shield yourself from accountability to the American people.

I urge the Senate to hold Dr. Ralph de la Torre, CEO of Steward, in criminal contempt.

And I thank, once again, Chairman Sanders and Ranking Member Cassidy for their great leadership on this issue.

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