The COVID-19 pandemic was hard on a lot of North Carolinians, resulting in job loss or reduced income. But for the major hospitals in the state, COVID resulted in billions of dollars of profit, according to a report from North Carolina State Treasurer Dale Folwell.
Folwell in a press release said, “Some things are worth getting mad about. The hospital cartel is using taxpayer dollars to help crush the middle class and rob lower-income families of upward mobility. Wealthy hospitals took billions of taxpayer dollars meant to protect struggling hospitals – and then some billed poor families or even sued patients.”
The report states that the seven large hospital systems in the state, Atrium, Novant, UNC, Duke, Vidant Cone and WakeMed Health, recorded $5.2 billion in net profits in 2021, along with $7.1 billion growth in cash and investments from 2019 to 2021.
All of the large hospitals had record net profits, but Duke was number one with a 41 percent net profit in 2021.
The hospitals recorded these profits after taking $1.5 billion in taxpayer funded COVID relief money and another $1.6 billion in Medicare Accelerated and Advance Payments.
At the same time charity care spending fell for a third of the hospitals in 2020, while people were struggling with lockdowns, curfews, job losses and COVID.
Folwell said, “While health care workers suffered on the front lines, hospital executives made billions on Wall Street. None of these nonprofit systems pay any property, income or sales taxes. Many failed to honor their charitable mission even when thousands of North Carolinians lost their businesses and their jobs during the pandemic.”
Marilyn Bartlett, a senior policy fellow at the National Academy for State Health Policy (NASHP), said, “NASHP analysis has found that many health systems are in more prosperous positions now than before the pandemic. Having access to and analyzing data to understand hospital charges, prices, costs, investments, and liabilities is critical.”
Folwell is asking hospital systems that made these huge profits during the pandemic to either return the taxpayer dollars or to commit to reducing hospital price inflation.
Folwell said, “Hospital executives made record profits off the backs of sick people during the pandemic and decades before. We have a duty to make health care affordable for North Carolina families. We have a duty to hold hospital executives accountable for wrecking the financial health of thousands of patients and transferring wealth from citizens to them.”
This is what happens when there is an incentive to say a patient has Covid. I know nurses that are making over 100 per hour and getting 250 just to show up
Of course they did. They’re still whoring for grants from the state & feds even today. Who would have ever thought such a thing?
The whole existence of “non-profits” has gotten insanely out of hand. Charity–yes, profits–no.
Anyone running a non-profit, or not-for-profit can figure out how to show losses so it looks like they are bleeding.
They should all have to file all the taxes (churches, also) and then maybe qualify for “charitable” deductions from us—the taxpayers.
Making hay while the sun shines, these are “for profit “ institutions, not Government run institutions.
McDonalds also saw record profits for the same period simply by closing dining rooms and eliminating staff.
When (not if) our Federal Government takes over universal healthcare you can rest assured we will see even higher prices and more administration expense.
Why are they exempt from property tax and income tax??? That’s not right.
And this is clear evidence of collusion, conspiracy and racketeering by, and of the Big Medical. Big Pharma, and Big Government entities.
If you were fool enough to agree to The Clot Shot, you were just a pawn. And I pray you don’t fall victim to the consequences (cardiac arrest, stroke, shingles, and many other auto-immune illnesses).
Don’t buy their BS. Learn to think for yourself.
God Bless You.
Hospital executives should also be held accountable to give the Covid profits to families who lost loved ones due to the executives not allowing doctors to be doctors. It was criminal to block medical treatment known to be effective to patients in order to make a profit from Covid money.
What dewormer? Clorox? Sun rays injected inside body?
I’m really surprised that people are surprised at this. It’s ALWAYS been about money. Don’t believe me? The next time you get an in house hospital bill DEMAND an itemized accounting. You will be amazed at how the total drops LIKE A ROCK.
Doctors and hospitals still require masks, at least the ones I am familiar with. Why? Because they want to keep government funding flowing. Requiring a mask is like saying, all is not okay, do not go about your daily lives because you may die from Covid.
As far as nonprofits, large, expensive to reside in retirement communities do not pay property taxes or state sales tax and other fool-the-taxpayer benefits. All thanks to lobbyists for retirement homes with the help of our legislators in Raleigh. Some retirement communities charge an entry fee of a quarter million to three quarter million dollars just for the privilege to call the community home. Then the residents are charged $5,000 or so per month for the privilege. This is a racket. It benefits so few people but hurts the rest. It can be stopped only by the state legislature.
I would posit that many of the state legislators do not know about this arrangement because the legislation was passed so long ago. Every North Carolian who pays property taxes and sales tax should be troubled by this undeserved privilege.
I am happy that the residents in these facilities have the means to live where they choose to live. However, it is unfair that the rest of us are subsidizing their choice.
This is not directed to the residents but to the legislators who allow influence from lobbyist. I cannot afford a lobbyist, and neither can most people reading this post.
While current covid isn’t a killer anymore, it is highly contagious and causes high number of absences that hospitals can’t afford if they want to operate. So masks help. Not complicated. And certainly not a conspiracy.
The real cause of “absences”, “staffing shortages” and “supply chain problems” is the vaccine mandates that caused nurses, airline pilots, and truckers to be fired for refusing to be injected with the Clot Shot.
Just more of this Administration’s efforts to make us Venezuela.
Less than 1% of nurses or medical staff refused the vaccines. But you go ahead and live in your fantasy land.
Obamacare was the lynchpin in converting our medical system into the economically fascist medical-industrial complex that it is today. Back in the 1950s, when we had a reasonable facsimile of a free market, doctors made house calls.
Ha ha ha ha…two more weeks and Republicans will have their replacement plan ready. Ha ha ha ha
NEVER let a good crisis go to waste !!
Corporations do take advantage of a profit opportunity. From Cone to Disney, they all do it. That’s they way it works, as sometimes they lose money, too. Without a profit motive, we’d all be on the barter system. Or you can just go socialist, like Venezuela or Soviet Russia. Good luck with medical care. Despite huge taxes in the UK and Canada, LONG waits and denials for treatment are commonplace.
The Hospitals & medical providers charge a lot of money, but much of it goes to cover expenses when people don’t/can’t pay their bills. If you look at the equipment they use, you can see a great deal of their cost. Their big risk is a depression, when even more people don’t pay their bills – as the emergency rooms pile up with people who have no means to pay.
I had a relative who ran up nearly a quarter million in medical bills, before he died. The medical providers had to eat it. No wonder doctors screen new patients for their ability to pay.
There isn’t enough money on the planet to take care of people who eat, smoke, inject, and drink themselves to death.