Nonprofit hospitals are defined as those that devote at least 3% (or in some states 4%) of their revenue to treat patients who cannot pay for treatment. Well, if Obamacare works to insure everybody, those requirements might be hard to meet, forcing the 60% of the nation’s hospitals that are non-profit to lose that status and the tax advantages that go with it.
Notice that patients without insurance WERE getting treated, and that hospitals had a strong financial incentive to treat them. (Did you know about that? Why hasn’t the charitable dimension of the old system been discussed? Might that have been improved as an alternative to changing our whole health care system for everyone?) This is another unintentional revolutionary consequence of Obamacare. After the jump, read the story from Forbes. [Read more...]