Do nonprofit hospitals earn their tax breaks?

📢Make it make sense. Let’s talk about whether non-profit hospitals really deserve the tax breaks we give them.

The Lown Institute did a study on more than 1,700 nonprofit hospitals in the USA.

These hospitals get massive tax breaks because they are supposed to give back to their communities.

The study looked at whether they’re giving back to their communities as much as they should.

Here’s what they found:

1. Big Gap in Spending: About 77% of these hospitals aren’t spending as much on helping people and their communities as they save from not paying taxes. This difference is called a “fair share” deficit.

2. Huge Amount of Money: This “fair share” deficit added up to $14.2 billion in 2020. With that money, we could have cleared the medical debts of 18 million Americans or saved 600 rural hospitals from shutting down.

3. Surplus (Profit) vs. Help: Even after getting extra money for COVID-19 relief, many of these hospitals still had huge surpluses.

4. State-Specific Impacts: In Massachusetts, Minnesota, Rhode Island, and Washington D.C., the total money not spent by hospitals could have paid off all the medical debts in those places.

5. Rural Hospitals Struggle: In 41 states, the amount not spent by these hospitals could have helped every rural hospital that was losing money in 2020.

This is more than just numbers. It’s about whether these tax-free hospitals are really helping out as much as they should be.

We need to think about how to fix this situation.

How can we make sure these hospitals are really supporting their communities?

For more info, check this out: Lown Institute’s 2023 Fair Share Spending Report

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