How are they bringing in the dough? This article states a decline in charity care to be one area, but I'm sure there's much more between the lines...Medicare is being a bit nicer to the hospitals with increases while the physicians continue to look at the potential cut in pay on July 1st...BD
There’s big money in health care, even for institutions that aren’t chartered to make a profit. The combined net income of the 50 largest nonprofit hospitals in this country was more than $4 billion in 2006, up from less than $1 billion in 2001, the WSJ reports.
There are a bunch of reasons for the profit growth. Medicare reimbursements to hospitals have been climbing, and some big mergers have given hospitals more leverage in negotiating prices with insurers. Critics also cite inadequate spending on charity care. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) says, “Some nonprofit hospitals seem to forget that their operations are subsidized with generous tax breaks. They allow their priorities to get out of whack.” The senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee threatened last year to introduce legislation that would require nonprofit hospitals to deliver minimum levels of charity care to maintain their tax benefits.
Health Blog : On Top of Tax Breaks, Nonprofit Hospitals Reap Big Profits
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