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Hospitals that make profits should pay taxes

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Re: Hospitals that make profits should pay taxes

#131

Post by iraqmtpizza »

lostmsu wrote: post #105
simonbarker87 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you’re already paying for other people’s illnesses through insurance with the downside of layers of middlemen taking a profit. At least here in the UK an emergency or cancer won’t bankrupt me, for the rest of it I can choose to get private health insurance if I like or wait for the NHS to work through the queue (which is sadly becoming increasingly common as our government is obsessed with copying what America do…

In the US it is not a necessity. There are private insurance plans with entry restrictions (e. g. you are ineligible if you smoke)

[flagged]

Re: Hospitals that make profits should pay taxes

#132

Post by FireBeyond »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #39
ysofunny wrote: post #2

so should religions that make profits pay taxes, something tells me neither will happen

Every church and religious order I've done work with on commercial projects paid taxes like any other commercial entity. The factor that determines if they pay taxes seems to be if they're engaged in what the government sees as commerce or if they see it as charity/practice of religion. Church bookstores, at least the ones I've been involved with, had to pay taxes. Donations for the operating of the church and charit…

That may also be a factor of states that implement recoverable taxes, where moreso than showing an exemption, the organization pays the tax, but gets to deduct that amount from tax owed.

Re: Hospitals that make profits should pay taxes

#133

Post by sarchertech »

konschubert wrote: post #115
missedthecue wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they are for-profit they do. HCA Hospitals is the biggest for-profit and they paid $1.6 billion in taxes last year. A lot of hospitals are non-profits or not-for-profits. Profits they make must legally go toward furthering their stated cause and cannot be paid out as dividends.

But. They can be paid as salaries. :)

Yes but the salaries have to be reasonable. You can’t setup a charitable organization and then pay yourself $10 million a year to run it.

And the people getting paid are usually separate from the people in charge. Most of the time board members of non-profits are either unpaid or are paid a small token amount. When they are paid, it’s not going to be a meaningful chunk of the profits.

Re: Hospitals that make profits should pay taxes

#134

Post by pessimizer »

Almondsetat wrote: post #26
gumby wrote: post #16

The hike idea of a “nonprofit” is dumb and ripe with abuse. Nonprofits still have to pay payroll, the phone bill etc. Why have someone deciding that they don’t have to pay taxes? They can certainly just show a loss for year after year.

Because a non profit cannot keep the profits (duh), thus all the extra money has to go back into the economy. Since every purchase has VAT they are effectively already paying a tax on their profits and shouldn't be further taxed

The point is that they can make sure that they don't have any extra money by giving themselves raises, or overspending with friendly vendors.

Re: Hospitals that make profits should pay taxes

#135

Post by echelon »

olliej wrote: post #113
echelon wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I always wonder why people seemingly can’t apply their experiences beyond themselves I grew up lower middle class, and I didn't have it easy. I have no idea who my birth parents were. I had an abusive father. I was bullied and beaten relentlessly by the other children that didn't like on-the-spectrum kids. I didn't party like those that abused me, I withdrew into myself and turned that into hard work. So when I see…

... I had it tough, therefore others should too? What if those others had it tougher than you? have you apologized to them for having it so much easier? Or, hear me out, maybe the goal should be for tomorrow to be better than today, or yesterday, and that definitionally means a lot of stuff gets easier. Complaining as you're doing here is the same as saying "this cancer treatment should be banned because I lost famil…

My original post suggests that costs should be attributed to risks.

If you take an outsized portion of health care relative to the rest of society, there's a chance that may be linked to behavioral choice. If you smoke a pack every day, eat two McGriddles every morning, film parkour stunts for your YouTube channel, go to the STD clinic monthly, are an alcoholic, etc.

Society should not be paying for this in the same way it pays for cancer and freak accidents. It's malinvestment that could have been prevented.

Re: Hospitals that make profits should pay taxes

#136

Post by tialaramex »

throw0101c wrote: post #50
iscrewyou wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are religious organizations that own hospitals. I was flabbergasted when I found out about this recently. My first thought was how they’ve got a perfect system to avoid all taxes. Edit: it seems like the typical derailment is happening when it comes to religion. The topic is about taxes. I mentioned taxes. Not if religious organizations should own hospitals.

> There are religious organizations that own hospitals. I was flabbergasted when I found out about this recently. Why would you be surprised at this? In (e.g.) Christianity, caring for the poor and sick has been one of the central tenants since its inception, so why wouldn't formal institutions be organized doing so? Before the welfare state—which is a fairly recent invention—the largest organization would have been…

> It can reasonably be argued that the very idea of taking care of the poor, etc, only came into Western civilization because of Christianity.

You can try that argument but it's not very convincing. I think you could do equally well arguing that slavery is the fault of Christianity, or warfare or various other things humans have sometimes done and sometimes not done...

The ancient Greeks (so, significantly before Christianity and also influential for "Western civilization") have a whole bunch of goddesses representing the idea of specific kinds of being nice to others. Plutarch is like "Philanthropy is a good idea".

Re: Hospitals that make profits should pay taxes

#137

Post by beryilma »

Not really healthcare, but Harvard University, for example, with $30 billion endowment is a non-profit! And they don't pay property taxes even though they are the biggest land and property owners in Cambridge. Not for profit is just a lie for such institutions.

Re: Hospitals that make profits should pay taxes

#138

Post by foldr »

echelon wrote: post #135
olliej wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... I had it tough, therefore others should too? What if those others had it tougher than you? have you apologized to them for having it so much easier? Or, hear me out, maybe the goal should be for tomorrow to be better than today, or yesterday, and that definitionally means a lot of stuff gets easier. Complaining as you're doing here is the same as saying "this cancer treatment should be banned because I lost famil…

My original post suggests that costs should be attributed to risks. If you take an outsized portion of health care relative to the rest of society, there's a chance that may be linked to behavioral choice. If you smoke a pack every day, eat two McGriddles every morning, film parkour stunts for your YouTube channel, go to the STD clinic monthly, are an alcoholic, etc. Society should not be paying for this in the same…

If health insurance were priced according to individual risk then a huge swathe of the population wouldn’t be able to afford health insurance (as indeed is still the case to some extent, even after Obamacare). And that’s assuming that you leave Medicare and Medicaid in place - which logically you shouldn’t, according to your line of argument.

How it could be a malinvestment for a society to invest in the health of...its very own constituents, is a nut that I won’t attempt to crack.

Re: Hospitals that make profits should pay taxes

#139

Post by [deleted] »

mdasen wrote: post #77

This strikes at an issue we haven't really addressed enough in non-profits: how much community benefit do they need to offer? A non-profit simply means that there are no investors who can profit from the business. However, I think we haven't really thought enough about how much community benefit they need to offer to justify being tax exempt - and it's a hard problem. For example, let's say I run a non-profit hospita…

[deleted]

Re: Hospitals that make profits should pay taxes

#140

Post by sarchertech »

mdasen wrote: post #77

This strikes at an issue we haven't really addressed enough in non-profits: how much community benefit do they need to offer? A non-profit simply means that there are no investors who can profit from the business. However, I think we haven't really thought enough about how much community benefit they need to offer to justify being tax exempt - and it's a hard problem. For example, let's say I run a non-profit hospita…

> This strikes at an issue we haven't really addressed enough in non-profits: how much community benefit do they need to offer? A non-profit simply means that there are no investors who can profit from the business.

Non-profit and tax exempt aren’t the same thing. A non-profit must apply for tax exempt status and the IRS will look at things like public benefit vs private benefit, diversity of control etc…

A vanity hospital that is controlled by 1 person who tends to put his his name on everything, and that benefits the person running it more than the public could lose their tax exempt status.

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