Time To Take Tax Breaks Away From Non-Profit Hospitals
Many non-profit hospitals in the US should not performing sufficient charitable care to justify the billions of {dollars} of tax breaks they obtain.
A long time in the past, the federal authorities created guidelines excepting non-profit hospitals from many taxes. On the time, most hospitals within the U.S. had been charitable organizations, nearly all of their sufferers unable to pay for the companies they obtained. At the moment, hospitals relied upon philanthropy—the assist of non secular organizations or the generosity of particular person donors—to stability their budgets. They relied upon tax breaks, too.
Then after World Struggle II, an rising variety of People gained well being care protection. Now, hospitals had been receiving an rising proportion of their revenue from paying prospects. Nonetheless, neither native nor federal governments pulled again their tax breaks.
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Quick ahead to immediately: many rich non-profit hospitals present surprisingly little charitable care. Not less than that is the conclusion I got here to after studying a study led by Ge Bai from Johns Hopkins College. For each $100 of total expenditures, non-profit hospitals wrote off solely $2 of charitable care. For context, for-profit hospitals wrote off round $4 of care.
Tax breaks to non-profit hospitals exceed $25 billion a yr. If such hospitals aren’t serving to out the neediest People anymore, or provide such help solely not often, then it is time to start out scaling again tax breaks.
