Make Charitable Hospitals Charitable

I am your constituent and I just learned that tax exempt hospitals are providing very little charitable care compared to their income. 6 of the top 16 tax exempt hospitals provide less than 1%. They are involved in aggressive bill collection, sell debt to collection agencies and drive patients into bankruptcy - and we are subsidizing this. Moreover, the charitable care they provide is vastly outweighed by the tax benefit they receive. In fact for the almost 3000 tax exempt hospitals, 44% of their profit is from their tax benefits. I refer you to the report submitted to the Senate’s Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee by it’s chair, Senator Sanders, on October 10, 2023. Here is a link. https://www.sanders.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/Executive-Charity-HELP-Committee-Majority-Staff-Report-Final.pdf Here is what you can do. You can pass legislation that in order to maintain tax exempt status, hospitals must provide at least 10% of their income as charity care to the poor. You can demand that they publish easy to find instructions on how to apply for charity care. I want you to do this for all of us.