For-profit means not for you Please indulge this local story. It’s not as local as it first seems. Ever since for-profit HCA Healthcare Inc. bought our local nonprofit hospital system in 2019, patient and staff complaints about understaffing have soared. Hundreds of veteran doctors and nurses have resigned. N.C. Attorney General Josh Stein, Democratic candidate for governor in 2024, has faced repeated questions from locals for approving the deal. Stein had limited authority to halt the $1.5 billion sale, his office says, so long as legal I’s were dotted and T’s were crossed. Stein, however, negotiated additional concessions in the purchase agreement and has has since sued HCA for failing to live up to its standards for patient care. Asheville Watchdog, an online investigative site staffed by “retired” local reporters (some, Pulitzer winners), has leaned into the story: Mission Hospital risks losing Medicare and Medicaid funding because of deficiencies in care that were so severe, state inspectors concluded last month, that they “posed immediate jeopardy to patients’ health and safety,” Asheville Watchdog has learned. “Immediate jeopardy” is the most serious deficiency possible for a hospital. The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services has recommended that Mission lose its participation in Medicare unless it quickly corrects the deficiencies, according to a letter obtained Thursday by The Watchdog. Failure to correct the deficiencies could threaten the financial viability of the hospital system. The majority of patients in Western North Carolina are on Medicare, Medicaid or uninsured. Locals warned this would happen. A longtime…