Posted on 02/20/2020 2:09:52 PM PST by karpov
...
Patients are understandably confused. They see hospitals consolidating and creating vast medical empires with sophisticated marketing campaigns and sleek digs that resemble luxury hotels. And then there was the headline-grabbing nugget from a Health Affairs study that seven of the 10 most profitable hospitals in America are nonprofit hospitals.
Hospitals fall into three financial categories. Two are easy to understand: There are fully private hospitals that mostly function like any other business, responsible to shareholders and investors. And there are public hospitals, which are owned by state or local governments and have obligations to care for underserved populations. And then there are “private nonprofit” hospitals, which include more than half of our hospitals.
Nearly all of the nation’s most prestigious hospitals are nonprofits. These are the medical meccas that come to mind when we think of the best of American medicine — Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins, Mass General.
The nonprofit label comes from the fact that they are exempt from federal and local taxes (usually including property tax, payroll tax and sales tax) in exchange for providing a certain amount of “community benefit.”
Nonprofit hospitals have their origins in the charity hospitals of the early 1900s, but over the last century they’ve gradually shifted from that model. Now their explosive growth has many questioning — with good reason — how we define “nonprofit” and what sort of responsibility these hospitals have to the communities that provide this financial dispensation.
It’s time to rethink the concept of nonprofit hospitals. Tax exemption is a gift provided by the community and should be treated as such. Hospitals’ community benefit should be defined more explicitly in terms of tangible medical benefits for local residents.
It actually isn’t much of a surprise that nonprofit hospitals are often more profitable than for-profit hospitals.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Don't like coal
Don't like pharmaceutical companies
Don't like hospitals
Don't like insurance companies
Don't like Wall Street
Don't like...
The list is long of the institutions the Leftists don't like.
We still have the best medical care in the world, but hey lets put
the government totally in charge of it, install a one payer system,
and become just like the naitons around the world whose government
health provision is struggling to provide services.
These people are just like Nancy Pelosi, "We have to totally destroy the
place, before you can see how we intend to fix it.
What about the outrageous pay the admin pays themselves.
Try receiving medical care at the “non profit” hospitals that were established to provide health care if you don’t have good insurance. These “non profits” will seize your home and garnishee your wages for unpaid bills.
Yet they all seek “charitable” donations to perform their work. Too bad they are not required to publish the salaries of their executives and how lucrative contracts seem to be regularly made with members of their Board or families of the “non profit” executives.
Non-profits are really for profit.
The fact is state governments and the feds need to rewrite the rules for
charitable institutions that limit admin and board of director salaries.
It pretty much happens to all charitable organizations that eventually they start to be run for the benefit of the group that controls the charity instead of for the benefit of the alleged charitable purpose.
Charitable hospitals should be legally required to put most of their profits toward charity medical care.
They are not owned as a business enterprise where share holders or board
members get a financial cut based on profits.
All profits are rolled over back into the enterprise.
Most hospitals are struggling to keep the doors open.
Payroll tax exemption? BS, unless the communist author means NYC taxes. Non-profit employer and employees are subject the social security and medicare taxes like anyone else.
The author also fails to fathom that without 50% of hospitals delivering services, the other 50% would be overwhelmed.
Where does the author think the “profits” of non-profits go? If Boards of Directors or Administrators are enriching themselves, file complaints for fraud. When someone starts whining about “serving” a “community” it’s because they want government to run every last thing.
Your point about universities should be put to that world famous economist Elizabeth Warren, who was paid $400,000+ per year as a Harvard professor. Now that’s a racket.
12 - 13% of the population are responsible for most of the healthcare costs in the nation. That is why insurance companies post huge profits because their most members are relatively healthy.
You pointed out an emerging problem because that percentage is fixing to get more robust and Medicaid is fixing to get submerged soon.
What about the outrageous pay the admin pays themselves.
Yep. The CEO if one of our local “non profit” hospitals was recently in the news for making the largest real estate purchase of the week: a mansion on the river here in the Jacksonville, FL.
Not where I am they are building bigger and better.
Do you want to go to a building built in the 1940s, or would you like to
get your services at a state of the art medical center?
There's only so much retrofitting you can do in an older building. New
advancements call for a new physical plant. At some point you have to
bite the bullet, and build a new wing or replace the entire hospital.
This has to be done with profits and financing over decades that must be
paid off.
It doesn't mean this hospital is loaded with cash. It will be under the gun
for decades paying off the loans.
Then don’t call your-self a not for profit.
I have no problem with business making money.
I do have a problem with them lying about it.
The Superbowl was a non-profit event until recently. Seemed everyone was making money on it
Crap, hospitals actually operate and perform risk management on their own to sustain growth in order to stay in business?
Burn down that CEO’s house now, healthcare is a right not a service and providers are just measly slaves who should not command a MANAGABLE salary!!!
Who do you think is paying for that house? The same people who pay for medicaid. I have an acquaintance that works in that hospital. The waste related to “defensive medicine” aka hospital profit centers is outrageous. These defacto for profit hospitals are little better than Big Tech in my book. They’d load their business/hospital up with low wage H-1B’s while squeezing every cent out of patients/insurers(medicaid) if the could.
Try receiving medical care at the “non profit” hospitals that were established to provide health care if you don’t have good insurance. These “non profits” will seize your home and garnishee your wages for unpaid bills.
Yet they all seek “charitable” donations to perform their work. Too bad they are not required to publish the salaries of their executives and how lucrative contracts seem to be regularly made with members of their Board or families of the “non profit” executives.
Exactly. Go into just about any ER with a hang nail and come out with a chest x-ray, $100 bottle of ibuprofen and a $5,000 bill. This level “care” is not sustainable. But in mean time the execs party like it’s 1929. Much of it on the taxpayer dime.
“The BABY BOOMERS are 74 years old this year.”
Got a hard on for the ‘BOOMERS’ have you?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.