Headlines that don't merit their own entry

Top 3% of U.S. Taxpayers Paid Majority of Income Taxes in 2016

Gore: Jet Stream 'Getting Loopier and Wavier,' So 'We Have a Global Emergency'

Trump snubs Feinstein, Harris to nominate conservative judges to liberal 9th Circuit

Mary Robinson on climate change: ‘Feeling “This is too big for me” is no use to anybody’

Italian Interior Minister prepares legislature for self-defence: “No trial for those who defend their property”

‘Bitcoin and Guns, That’s the Only Way to Save This Country’

Libertarian and Police Accountability Pages Deleted in Facebook Purge

Facebook has lost 30% of its value since July

500,000 Afghan migrants are ready to enter Europe via unprotected Turkish-Greek border area

Bear spray, bloody brawls at Patriot Prayer 'law and order' march in Portland

Dozens of Witches Gather to Place Public Hex on Brett Kavanaugh

Black Man Cuffed on His Own Property While Moving Into New Home

Venezuela Has Lost 13% of its Population in a Mass Exodus from Socialism

Fight Fizzles Before Police Arrive; Cops Start Tasing and Arresting People Anyway

Violence, Public Anger Erupts In China As Home Prices Slide

Lawsuit: KSP trooper attacks man after Facebook post

Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson in 'real legal jeopardy', GOP investigator says

Toronto's Sick Kids hospital preparing policy for euthanasia for youth over 18 that could one day apply to minors

Human 2.0 Is Almost Here: The Transhumanism Agenda Just Went Mainstream

The view from Saudi Arabia as world holds its breath

Thousands line up for zero-down-payment, subprime mortgages

How the Heir of the White Nationalist Movement Learned to Let Go of Hatred

Congress Can’t Create an Independent and Unaccountable New Branch of Government

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"American healthcare might not be the best world, but it is the most expensive."

Tags: guest content ∙ video ∙ Adam Ruins Everything ∙ hospital ∙ healthcare ∙ corporatism

Taxing Hospitals Is a Lousy Way to Fix Health Care

❝❝But if that’s the case, then the best solution is probably to stop subsidizing it, not to make the subsidy more complex. A lot of the current mess in the American health-care system can be traced back to the thicket of hidden subsidies and fiddling regulations we’ve enacted over the years, trying to fine-tune the system into some platonic ideal where nothing ever goes wrong and no one ever makes an unseemly amount of money. But fine tuning has not delivered us the platonic ideal of anything, except perhaps the word “dysfunction.” It might be time to step back and rethink our approach.

We might start by asking ourselves, “Why are hospitals tax exempt in the first place?” When the income tax was first levied, giving hospitals nonprofit status made sense, because these organizations did largely act as charities. Over the succeeding decades, however, the government decided that it didn’t want to rely on charities for charity care, and enacted a series of programs that financed such care with government dollars.

In an ideal world, perhaps hospitals would have gratefully accepted those dollars, and redirected the money they’d been spending on treating patients to cover gaps in the system, like dental care (woefully underprovided either by charity or government fiat). But we do not live in the ideal world. The difference between a charity hospital and its for-profit brethren has shrunk smaller and smaller, and by now, seems too small to justify treating them as charities.❞❞
     — Megan McArdle

Tags: clipping ∙ Megan McArdle ∙ subsidy ∙ healthcare ∙ hospital ∙ tax exempt ∙ charity

Headlines that don't merit their own entry

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