Profitable Hospitals Put Gun to the Heads of Medicaid Moms

Seriously, three "non-profit" hospitals got their tax exempt status yanked after pulling record profits, and now their lobbying organization is all, "nice charity they got going here. Shame if somebody wrecked it."

"It's not good for patients. It's not good for our communities. There's nothing positive about this," said IHA President Maryjane Wurth

Wurth said the denial of property tax exemptions for Prentice, Edward and Decatur Memorial hospitals could mean big changes for their patients.

"Northwestern Memorial serves the highest number of Medicaid moms that deliver babies in the entire state and we, frankly, think these are essential community benefits that need to be preserved," Wurth said. "We fear and worry that this will mean that there will be less community services, less ability to help with prevention and primary care services, less access to care — because these hospitals reinvest and provide essential community assets and services to patients."

So either give us our tax breaks or the Medicaid mom gets it? Also, nobody is saying you won't get reimbursed for Medicaid services at the same rates you've always been reimbursed. Just that you have to pay your fucking property taxes.

The story goes on at length in this vein, quoting people who like the hospital and think it's awesome and jobs for the community, and how dare we pick on them OMG MEEN. I had to go to the comments section to find out what kind of profits these "non-profit" hospitals were pulling down:

The Northwestern Memorial decision was based on its 2007 application for its newly constructed $450 million women's hospital. The Northwestern system had $1.17 billion in net patient revenue in 2007, according to Klemens. Northwestern reported charity care totaling 1.85 percent of its revenues.

This info is from other stories, including one here.

Real charitable business, that. Saintly, even. I don't know how they manage to do it, what with the weight of that cross on their backs all day long.

There are just too many fucking assholes in the world today, seriously.

A.

Comments

[pansypoo]

hospital industrial complex.

[Jude]

Hey, that gold cross is pretty heavy. I mean, it is 19.3 g/(cm)^3 at room temperature.

[The Reality Based Dave]

Reminds me of the stories about how many playgrounds Walmart builds - for FREE! Teah, Walmart gives back to the local communities - .00000000000001% of their daily profits. It's only fair, considering they instruct new hires how to apply for local government assistance programs.

[iceblue]

Well, go ahead and give them a 1.85% tax break

[MapleStreet]

Part of Healthcare reform is gonna have to address the fact that healthcare is caught in a tension between humanitarian goals and money. And the pendulum has really swung to where the money is the focus.

[prattfall]

Go talk to someone who works at Prentice; there's nothing non-profit about how they treat their workers. It's like the McDonalds of mammography.