The nation's top hospitals advertised and lobbied mightily to keep their tax-exempt status under Obamacare, citing the charitable care they provide their communities. But a decade later they've cut back on such givebacks even as their revenue has soared due to the tax break and the millions of additional paying customers provided by the health-insurance overhaul, a Politico investigation finds.
From Politico:
Read Full Article »Hospitals' behavior in the years since the Affordable Care Act provided them with more than 20 million more paying customers offers a window into the debate over winners and losers surrounding this year's efforts to replace the ACA. It also puts a sharper focus on the role played by the nation's teaching hospitals – storied international institutions that have grown and flowered under the ACA, while sometimes neglecting the needy neighborhoods that surround them.
And it reveals, for the first time, the extent of the hospitals' behind-the-scenes efforts to maintain tax breaks that provide them with billions of dollars in extra income, while costing their communities hundreds of millions of dollars in local taxes.
