Community Health Systems Inc. recently completed open-market and privately negotiated repurchases at below par of a number of notes. In the context of the high leverage and 'B-' issuer credit rating, we view these repurchases on the junior-priority secured notes due 2029 and 2030 as tantamount to a default under our criteria given that lenders received less value than they were initially promised under the original securities. Therefore, we lowered our issuer credit rating on Community Health to 'SD' (selective default) from 'B-'. At the same time, we lowered our issue-level rating on the affected junior-priority secured notes to 'D' from 'CCC'. Our issue-level ratings on the other obligations are unchanged. We expect to revise the rating from 'SD' over
