Another Hospital Feel-Good Moment
Everyone by now should know that the term “nonprofit” is a joke. It was the most brilliant diversion ever created to make people think you are doing good. You can read all the articles we posted about this in the past here. With that in mind, here comes another beauty:
RWJBarnabas Health, a large nonprofit chain in New Jersey, whose CEO made a whopping $17 million in 2021, while the hospital system only spent 1.65 percent of its nearly $6 billion in revenue on charity care.
RWJBarnabas Health is far from alone in having plump executive pay and slim charity care spending. A HELP committee staff report released earlier this month examined the financial data on 16 of the country’s largest nonprofit, tax-exempt hospital systems. The systems collectively make more than $3 billion in revenue each year, but in 2021, 12 of the 16 systems spent less than 2 percent of their revenue on charity care—even though, as nonprofits, they earn federal, state, and local tax exemptions for providing charity care to low-income people and other charitable community benefits. Of those 12 spending less than 2 percent, six of them spent less than 1 percent.
How disgusting and sad is this?
Remember, all this is happening as they cut nurse-to-patient ratios, replace doctors with nondoctors, and cut nonprofitable services at the hospitals.
Something has to give. Unfortunately, it won’t be them.
I’m coming to realize that going into medicine is like buying a boat.
You know the old saying, the happiest days of your life are the day you buy a boat and the day you sell your boat.
Your happiest days are the day you get accepted to medical school, and the day you retire from medicine.
So much for all that “Christian healing mission” our local ‘nonprofit’ likes to go on about in their ads……
Anyone contemplating a career in health care should read and understand this. I was utterly clueless when I applied o med school, and when I read this, I just stack it on top of the large and growing pile of reasons I wish I could retire. Realizing you’ve spent a lifetime being a dupe to make someone else rich is depresing.