Your Medicaid Dollars at Work on Strait Lane, Continued: Is Texas Hedge Fund Heaven?

Remember how I told you about the Malouf’s amazing real estate acquisitions on Strait Lane? Now, I’m not judging here. For all we know, Dr. and Mrs. Malouf — he’s a dentist — could have inherited a bucketload of money or just belong to the Lucky Sperm Club. Well, maybe. Or not. Wednesday night WFAA’s Byron Harris unearthed even more info on this Medicaid pediatric orthodontic gravy train.

Newsflash: Dr. Malouf sold his money-minting clinics, All Smiles, to Valor Equity Partners, a Chicago-based hedge fund, says Harris.

According to reports Harris dug up, three years ago All Smiles collected $5.4 million from Medicaid orthodontics (MO). That brought All Smiles’ MO billings to $10.2 million, nearly doubling. Harris says:

The business of charging taxpayers for putting braces on kids’ teeth has mushroomed in Texas in the last three years. Nowhere is that growth more evident than on a stretch of South Buckner Boulevard in Dallas which might be called the “Medicaid Mile.”

As Harris says, hedge funds don’t buy companies that don’t make money, which is why almost all the dental clinics on “Medicaid Mile” are owned by hedge funds. Always interesting to see where and what kinds of enterprises land people on streets like Beverly Drive and Strait Lane.