Oversight Subcommittee Hearing on Where Tax-Exempt Hospitals are Spending Your Tax Dollars
House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight
2025-09-16
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Source: Congress.gov
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All right, let's get this subcommittee going. For brevity, I'm going to take my opening statement and just submit it to the record. Look, for many of us, we see 17% of the US economy is now in the tax-exempt space. For that, we're supposed to actually see what is the value of the community good. Help us understand the value of the community good and how we're doing it well.
Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank our witnesses for being here today. You know, our nation's nonprofit hospitals are the cornerstone of our health system, providing vital care to millions of Americans. These hospitals deliver unmatched benefits to our communities, keeping Americans healthy, bearing the brunt of care to those in need, and serving as a major employer in many of the areas in which they reside. Collectively, they deliver more in community benefit and charity care to their communities than the foregone revenue from their federal tax exemption. Yet nonprofit hospitals and our health systems are under attack. They are holding, I believe that this hearing today is a little more of a distraction than it is about the actual subject. Unemployment is on the rise, costs at the grocery store are surging, and healthcare premiums are set to skyrocket. all thanks to this administration. In the big, ugly bill, Republicans made a deliberate choice to strip away more than 15 million Americans of their health care and hit countless more with increased costs and red tape while giving billions to billionaires. Their refusal to extend the enhanced tax credits that help so many working Americans purchase their health coverage means another 4.2 million will become uninsured and tens of millions will see their largest premium hike in 15 years. Republicans enacted a $1.5 trillion in healthcare cuts, which are falling at the expense of our hospitals, providers, and patients, all to pay for tax cuts for billionaires. In Alabama, 375,000 people purchasing their own health insurance received tax credits to help afford coverage. If billionaires could get tax cuts, then why not working Americans. Republicans continue to refuse to extend these tax credits.
100,000 more Alabamians will lose their health care. A 60 year old couple in my district earning just over $80,000 will see their costs skyrocket more than 300% by about $20,000. That would have that would have to they would have to spend 32% of their income on health insurance alone. Republicans have dramatically cut our health system, and they are trying to hide from the record and distract the American public. Nonprofit hospitals have a long history of operating at a low financial margin. In fact, the ordinary nonprofit hospital typically operates at a negative operating margin in most years. They also are more likely than for-profit or government hospitals to offer every type of medical service. And nonprofit hospitals are considerably more likely to provide poorly reimbursed and thus unprofitable services. These services are disproportionately needed by patients who are uninsured or underinsured. The bottom line is that without nonprofit hospitals, we will continue to see increased rates of chronic diseases, decreased access to emergency care, and an increase in premature deaths. With current attack on hospital stability through Medicaid cuts and our failure of this committee to protect access to care, we must protect our hospitals to ensure access to care, and the improvement in the quality of life for all of our constituents. I'm looking forward to today's hearing, Mr. Chairman, and look forward to the testimony of our witnesses. And I really hope that we all can come to a consensus that supporting our health system instead of attacking it is what we should be doing. I yield back the balance of my time.
Now, introduction of our witnesses. William Hyde is Executive Director of Consumer Research. It doesn't actually say for who. Dr. Stanley Gottferb is Chairman of the Board of Do No Harm. Dr. G. Bai is Professor of Health Policy and Manager at John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Christopher Wally is Associate Director of the Center of Advancing Health Policy Through Research at Brown University. Dr. Jill Hurwitz is a Tolman Family Innovation Professor at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and a Professor of Emergency Medicine at Feinberg School of Medicine. William, you're up first.
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