The big “nonprofit” systems, which often advertised increased efficiencies as justifications for their mergers, didn’t lower rates, they raised them. In 2015, the average margin made by “nonprofit” hospitals in the United States was 3.4 percent, a margin CHWC would celebrate. Parkview’s Wabash Hospital made 49 percent, the highest in Indiana. In Colorado, hospital profits increased 280 percent from 2009 through 2018, from $538 per patient to $1,518. They then took those profits and, instead of distributing the cash to shareholders as a for-profit might, paid big salaries and stored
...more
