评论
打印
For years, nonprofit: hospitals have shied away from quantifying the amount of charitable care they provide communities. Hospital officials argue that it's almost impossible to put a dollar value on charity and doing so would take valuable tune and resources away from actually serving the need.(1)____(2)____
The charity question is significant because nonprofit hospitals get major tax breaks. Also, because of loopholes in state laws, nonprofit hospitals are often permitted to make huge profits.To complicate things further, the 2005 Government Accountability Office study concluded that.when it comes to charity care, the "differences between nonprofit and for-profit groups were often big."(3)____(4)____ To make up for this, nonprofit hospitals tend to arrange deals with city and state governments to provide "payment in lieu of taxes”(also known as PILOT programs).But for these payments often don’t equate the hospitals' overall tax benefit and are perceived as acts of good faith to show that hospitals are playing nice with their communities.(5)____(6)____
Recent economic downturns, therefore, have shined a detective’spotlight on the amount of charity care hospitals provide.(7)____ Investigative reports have shown up in Atlanta East Bay and Boston newspapers question charity care policies.(8)____The Boston Globe report calculated that Boston's "10 leading hospital companies benefited from an estimated $638 million in federal, state, and local tax breaks as well state discounts on borrowing in 2007, which accounts to $264 million more than the value of care for the poor and other charity work."(9)____(10)____
