According to OpenTheBooks.com, only two of the 20 hospitals paid back (only partially) their COVID-19 bailout. Meanwhile, hospital executives racked up Wall Street-sized compensation packages, which frequently exceeded $10 million per year.
OpenTheBooks.com auditors investigated America’s healthcare system and found so-called “nonprofit” hospitals and their CEOs are getting richer while the American people are getting sicker and poorer.
Topline
The 20 largest nonprofit hospitals in the country continued making massive profits while their cumulative net assets soared to $324.3 billion in 2021 from $200.6 billion in 2018. The year 2021 is the latest year available for cross-comparison purposes.
Those hospital systems received congressional COVID-19 bailouts of $23 billion and only two providers partially paid their COVID-19 bailout back.
Meanwhile, hospital executives racked up Wall Street-sized compensation packages, which frequently exceeded $10 million per year.
For example, the CEO at Ascension Healthcare based in St. Louis, Missouri made $13 million in 2021 — with three-year pay exceeding $22 million.
Furthermore, American life expectancy during this period sharply declined by a staggering 2.5 years from 2019 through 2022.
While “comparable country averages” rebounded from a COVID-19-related drop in 2021, the U.S. continued declining in life expectancy.
Yet, the cost of healthcare is still astronomically high, as the average family paid $22,463 in health insurance premiums in 2022. That does not include out-of-pocket costs like co-pays and deductibles, which can be thousands more.
This has led to medical debt for about 100 million Americans.
In 2020, the Trump Administration issued, and the Biden Administration finalized (January 2021) a healthcare transparency rule — to spur market competition and inform patients.
Yet, two years after the rule took effect, an independent audit found that nearly three-quarters of hospitals in the country were not complying — flouting the mandate that prices be posted clearly and comprehensively.
Big numbers
The 20 largest nonprofit hospital systems saw their combined net assets soar 62%, or $124 billion, in the three years to 2021. You — the U.S. taxpayer — funded the rocket ride. Examples…