GREG HINZ: Why are so many aldermen leaving? Who’ll be in charge? PAGE 2
ETHICS: Gov. Pritzker’s fortune intersects with state contracts. PAGE 3
CHICAGOBUSINESS.COM | SEPTEMBER 5, 2022 | $3.50
Hospitals pitch credit cards to patients
They’re teaming up with banks in the fast-growing market of medical credit cards as more people struggle to afford care
When Kristin Schell showed up at Mercy Hospital in St. Louis in 2017 with severe abdominal pain, she learned that she needed to have her gallbladder removed. The emergency room and surgery costs topped $6,000, and her high-deductible Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Illinois plan wouldn’t cover the entire bill. While she was headed into surgery, a hospital billing representative asked how she planned to pay. When Schell explained her predicament, the hospital suggested she apply for a medical credit card with an introductory no-interest period offered by Commerce Bank. “I wish I didn’t have to have that conversation right then because I wasn’t in the right mindset,” says Schell, who ended up charging about $2,500 to the card. “I feel like it was taking advantage of somebody at their very most vulnerable time. At that moment, they were more worried about how I was going to pay this bill than how they were going to help me.”
JOHN T. BOEHM
BY KATHERINE DAVIS
Kristin Schell
See HOSPITALS on Page 46
2022
WOMEN IN IN LAW LAW
Here’s why the bank deal boom went bust this year Rising interest rates are taking a bite out of banks’ investments, reducing their buyout value BY STEVE DANIELS
The stories of these 141 top lawyers brilliantly illustrate the sheer power of women in law. PAGE 15
Bank deals have dried up in the Chicago market, with 2022 on pace to match the doldrums of the COVID year of 2020. Only two bank mergers have been announced locally this year, well off last year’s pace. Instead of a once-in-a-century global pandemic, though, the issue this year is the
more familiar one of unexpected economic shifts exposing previously underappreciated risk-taking by banks. In the last several years, banks have taken more chances with their investment portfolios. Seeking returns in an ultra-low interest rate environment, they dived into higher-yielding municipal bonds and fixed-income securities with durations of more than five years. Those securities lost value when the Federal Reserve’s campaign to stamp out raging inflation sent interest rates See BANKS on Page 44
NEWSPAPER l VOL. 45, NO. 35 l COPYRIGHT 2022 CRAIN COMMUNICATIONS INC. l ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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TECH TAKEAWAY
REAL ESTATE
This CEO of a sofware firm dreams of taxis that fly. PAGE 6
Rehabbers rescue vacant suburban Mediterranean villa. PAGE 47
9/2/22 3:21 PM